


Further Atrocities of the Mutant's Body

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: M/M, Mpreg, Post Game, holy shit i can't believe i'm doing this, more characters will be added when they become relevant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-28
Updated: 2014-02-06
Packaged: 2017-12-30 18:18:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 34,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite. You'll probably survive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> well uh... i wrote this. i did it. fuck.............. ive wanted to for a really long time but i've been really embarrassed and idfk 
> 
> bluhhhhhhhhh
> 
> tbh not much is established in this first chapter, but for once I actually have pretty much the whole thing planned out

The room hasn't got that pleasantly foreign and flowery sweet smell to it anymore. The air's been bathed in your sweat.

Kanaya has dissapeared from her own guest room, hidden beneath your mess.

The plush reclining chair that you currently reside in has lost its charm of being an unfamiliar luxury that you could never afford. It is now only something to hold you when your legs and back will not.

Which is often.

You've been here an entire perigee. 

You adjust the volume of your movie. Your eyes start drifting closed, but you try to pry them back open.

They seem to be insistent, though. Maybe you'll just, shut them for a bit, let them rest, let your body slump back into the pillows, pull the blanket higher up over your chest, burry yourself in it, let your mind drift away from your physical being just for a bit. Just for a bit.

The blanket is so soft and warm and it's just like a cacoon and you curl into yourself and go to slump into a tight ball but there's something in the way. Your mind's relaxation crumples into a wad so tight you wonder if you'll ever be able to reshape it again

_It's not a tumor. You're not dying. It's not going to kill you._

No, but it's disgusting. Your body is revolting.

You switch to laying flat on your back. Far less comfortable. Doesn't help. There's also just so much... pressure that way. 

Ohh, your legs and hips and back fucking kill. You wish there was some position, any at all, that might possibly just somehow, some way, take off the pressure. 

You may as well have swallowed a twenty pound bowling ball. 

It's not a tumor or, well, it's technically not a parasite. It probably won't kill you. 

You sit up.

Too fast.

Way too fast. Oh fuck, that was way too fast. Your head is spinning. Have you had anything to drink today?

You haven't felt like getting up to do so. White clouds the edges of your vision while your head throbs, but only momentarily before it clears. 

You're kind of nauseous, but that's good news. You don't feel like vomiting currently. You're doing well. 

It's not a tumor, or a dangerous parasite. It shouldn't kill you. 

You brace yourself on the arm of the chair and haul yourself to your feet, taking the time to adjust your awkwardly weighted and out of balance body to keep yourself from falling over. 

You stretch, pulling your arms as high above your head as they'll go, and yawn, showcasing a crooked set of sharp yellow teeth and a black mouth that tastes like the dead. 

You relax and slump. You readjust your shirt and pull the worn fabric back down over your heavily swollen stomach, where it stubbornly refuses to stay much of the time. The problem is really that you've gotten so big and it just doesn't fit any more. 

It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite. You'll probably survive. 

You start to head over to the door and it moves it fucking moves okay okay you'll never get used to that it moves it moves they move they move THEY THEY THEY THEY. 

It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite. You'll probably survive. 

It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite. You'll probably survive. 

It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite. There's a decent chance you'll be fine.

It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite. You probably will only sustain minor injuries.

It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite. They'll come out eventually.

You should be fine. You should be fine. You should be fine

You take a deep breath and try to ignore the weird weird pinpointed pressure and unsettling distinct fucking wriggling. (God it's gross, it's gross, you'd rather die, you'd rather fucking die)

They're just testing muscles, or twitching, more like. It's not intentional on their part. Just twitching. 

That doesn't make it better. 

You grab your sweatshirt off of the desk chair and pull it over your head before leaving the room. At least that's always been so oversized that you probably won't be capable of outgrowing it.

Walking is made up of awkward strides from pained hips. You hate walking as much as you hate sitting, which you hate as much as lying down, which you hate as much as existing. 

But there is nothing in this universe you despise, as of recently, as much as the stairs. 

You come to the first step of the long spiraling staircase that connects every level of Kanaya's hive. Thankfully, the block she gave you is only on the third level.

Unfortunately, that also means that it is on the third level.

You lean your shoulder against the wall, putting most of your weight there, and make your slow descent down to the first level. Most of your focus goes into making sure you stay balanced. 

You make your way down to the first level with only so much discomfort. 

The floor is cold. The walk to the nutrition block is too far. You are continuing to be in a permanent state of unhappiness. 

By the time you set foot in the nutrition block and get a glass from the cabinet, you are suddenly in complete submission to the needs of your bladder.

You set the glass down on the counter before being able to fill it and turn to leave the block. As you are about to walk through the doorway, you hear talking. 

You continue walking until it registers. 

You hear talking.

No one lives here besides Kanaya, and as of recently, yourself.

The tall curving wall of the staircase hides you from the front door, where the conversation is flooding from. Kanaya's voice is distinctly fluttering through the air from a well practiced tongue. 

"Well, I don't mind at all," you catch.

You walk to the foot of the staircase, but are sure to keep yourself out of sight by hiding behind the wall. Whoever they are, you don't want them to see you. You don't want anyone to look at you for at least another two months.

"I will probably be able to be there in about a week, then," you hear a familiar and similarly cleanly articulated voice say.

You hesitantly glance around the corner and your blood pusher calms happily. 

Kanaya is just vocally trolling Rose. She's pacing as she speaks into her wrist communicator.

You exhaled, relieved, and waste no more time in walking quickly past her to the ablution block, being that if you were to wait just one more second there was a very strong likelihood that you'd piss yourself. 

She glances at you briefly as you walk by, but doesn't cease her conversation, which you've stopped paying attention to.

Once your overactive and irritatingly useless bladder is taken care of, you make very very sure to ignore how repulsive your reflection is becoming. You accidentally glance down at the fabric stretched over your abdomen, though, and the curve of your belly becomes too apparent. 

And you look up at your reflection. You cringe. You just look so heavy and weighted, like you've been stretched out by someone with no knowledge of logical anatomy. 

You look sick and disturbing, like the host of a parasite, like you've lost your body to something else. You just look wrong.

You look like you should be on life support with medicateurs hanging over you in minty green masks and latex gloves, ready to cut some monster out of you. 

It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite. You'll probably survive. 

You've been assured that you are actually doing quite well; your heart is fine, you're not starving, you're able to get up and walk around for the most part; you haven't had any seizures.

The "you haven't had any seizures" is a very specific, frightening, thing brought up by Rose, who then added that it was also spectacular that your hip bones hadn't split or cracked. (They'd instead just widened painfully quickly to accommodate your stretched out abdomen. So now you're permanently pearshaped as well.)

Lovely thoughts. Absolutely lovely. 

You slowly, with fearful hands, bring your fingertips to your stomach, just to remind yourself that it's real. You always twitch them away, thinking that touching it will hurt, that it's like some kind of sensitive growth. 

It's just flesh. It's just your flesh. What's beneath that taut skin, however, is another story. 

You pull your hand over the entire curve, worn black fabric dragging with your touch. 

It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite. You'll probably survive. 

The fact that it is not inherently dangerous is probably never going to completely settle in your stomach. You'll always be apprehensive. 

There's some danger there, that you know Kanaya's trying to downplay because you being calm is very important. (But how can you possibly be calm, how can you possibly be calm when you are- when there are- when there are- they move- they- they- they...)

You drag your hand back the other way over your belly. You feel a bit more movement.

You try to ward off initial revulsion.

It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite.

You've spent the last few perigees convinced you had some kind of worm in your intestines. And you'd gone to Jade a perigee ago to see if she could remove it when it was getting frighteningly large. You'd figured she'd know about that kind of thing. You don't know why, you just did.

She was for some reason in possession of some kind of handheld device with a screen with a sort of cylindrical wand type deal attached to it by a wire. She called it a handheld ultrasound device. 

She said she had it for studying animals without killing them. (She'd been very interested in biology recently. The new planet's species intrigued her.)

She said she wanted to take a look at exactly what she was dealing with before going and trying to cut you open. 

She put some kind of gel on your stomach that was absolutely freezing and then she pressed down almost painfully hard with that wand. She took a few minutes to look silently, dragging the stylus all over your bloated stomach.

The first thing she said made your blood pusher explode into franticness. You can still hear it over and over again in your mind, just how she said it, and the fear it invoked has never diminished. 

"There's.... more than one..." 

You pull your hand away and stop rubbing immediately, the memory echoing loudly through your skull. The initial fear returns to your chest as it always does. 

"Also... it's.... it's weird. I don't know much about troll anatomy, but, do you guys have anything that's, that's like a uterus? Do you know what a uterus is?"

You look away from your reflection, the familiar feeling of nausea in your guts becoming uncomfortably pronounced. 

"No, why would I know what that is?"

You wash your hands and leave the ablution block while unsuccessfully trying to stop the memory from playing.

"Okay, um, do you have anything attached to your nook?"

You walk past Kanaya again, still not looking at her. 

"Wh- What? Like, like what? There's the bladder for holding genetic material if that's what you mean. Fuck, oh god fucking dammit, is that- that's not where it is, is it?"

It could have been some kind of weird STD. It could have been anything at that point, but you knew where it came from before you knew what it was. You definitely knew where it came from at that point. 

Anger mixes in with the reborn fear, now. You're not sure you'll ever find a way to not be angry.

You walk into the nutrition block.

"That's where they are, yeah. And, and they look kind of..."

You grab your glass and open the thermal hub. 

"They look kind of like, the troll grubs I've seen in some textbooks Kanaya gave to me."

You want to throw up, but at the same time are battling desperately not to.

"What the fuck does that mean?" 

You fill the glass up with cranberry juice.

"Here."

And then she showed you the screen and you saw the weird silhouettes of segmented bodies with heads and tiny horns curled up safely in individual spheres. 

You then immediately sat up and just barely stopped yourself from vomiting. You didn't even have time to count them.

(You'd been tired and hungry and upset to begin with, as well as had dwindling emotional control.)

You put the bottle of juice back in the thermal hub.

She called Kanaya to get a second opinion, despite your protests that you didn't want anyone to know and that they were probably just parasites that looked like that or something and that you really wanted them out, just take them out, take them out, whatever they are, fucking take them out.

You lean against the counter and try to focus on the bitter taste of the drink. 

Jade called Kanaya, and Kanaya was over within a couple of hours to find you lying on your side on Jade's couch, belly weirdly distended and not fitting properly beneath your shirts. 

Then they left the room and had a talk.

Then they came back and Jade made you lie on your back and pull up your shirt and then squeezed more cold gel onto your belly and pressed almost too hard with that wand. 

Then they stared silently at the screen as the wand was dragged all over your abdomen. 

After a few minutes, they got up and left and had another talk, leaving you out of the loop about your own goddamned body.

Then they came back and Jade dragged the stylus over your stomach some more. Kanaya absently, while watching the screen, stuck her fingers into your unkept hair and seemed to try and soothe your very obvious panic.

(You kept yelling and insisting they tell you what was happening and they just wouldn't listen to you and you didn't know what to do or think you were so confused you were sick you had some kind of things growing in your reproductive organs you were upset you were scared and they wouldn't tell you anything)

"Don't worry. It's not a tumor and it's not a deadly parasite. You'll probably survive," she said. "You're not dying."

Then they got up and left again. They left for a very long time this time. And you were left there practically shaking on Jade's couch with your abdomen smeared with gel. 

When they came back, Jade gave you a towel to clean the gel off with, telling you that they were done with that for the time being.

Then Kanaya started asking you when all this started and exactly what symptoms you had (and why you hadn't told anyone) and if anything was making those symptoms go away and an endless amount of sometimes irrelevant seeming questions.

"I started feeling sick, like six perigees ago? I think? Then I started getting fat; I thought it was a tumor, maybe?"

"I'm just really nauseas almost constantly; and dizzy sometimes. And tired as fuck. Holy shit, I have never been so tired."

"No, that's not from anxiety. I thought it might've been originally, but as you can fucking see by the worms-"

"What-"

"Wow, okay, let's play the 'guess who's business that's not' game. Everyone here get's one guess. We'll go in a circle. Okay. I'll start. I'm going to guess, 'not yours'. And, oh, look at that, I got it first so I won before you even got your turn-"

"They told me not to tell anyone about it."

"Because they're an asshole. And they even went and did it asshole style when it happened."

"Wow, no, fuck you. That's not what I mean. No, god, shit, fuck no. Hell fucking no. I mean they were an asshole about it."

"Y-yeah, they fucking went and... They fucking used me as a pail like a completely pious, self centered, pile of inconsiderate hoofbeast shit. They're not really the type of scumbag I'd originally have pinned to be transmitting goddamned parasites, though." 

You finish the juice and refill the cup to bring back to your block. You head back to the dreaded stairs. 

"'Pregnant'? Like a pregnant pause? Like waiting? I'm waiting for a fucking answer." 

You pass Kanaya again, but she's too engrossed in her call. 

"Are you fucking high?"

You lean against the wall to keep your balance and walk up to the third level and down the hall to your respite block. 

They apparently had printed out a picture from the device depicting your insides. Jade showed it to you. 

"I've dissected a pregnant turtle before and this is very similar to how it looked," she said. "I'd immediately assume parasite as well if they weren't inside of eggs. And, actually, even that could pinpoint them as parasites, but their placement in your body, the timing with you having sex, and also the fact that they look pretty much exactly like troll grubs is making me suspicious." 

"Harley... Harley, listen. You're smart and good at science most of the time, but I think you may have recently contracted a minor case of incredible stupidity. Do you want to lie down? Do you need some water? Are you okay? Kanaya, get this girl some water and maybe get Rose to evaluate her mental state." 

Jade flicked your horn in response, sending distress vibrating down through your skull and spine. As you held your head and groaned, Kanaya sat down next to you.

"I know this sounds far fetched. I'm not really sure it's plausible and I honestly think that we may need to look at a few more things first before really settling on a conclusion. However..." She showed you the picture again.

"I have been studying on how to care for the mothergrub for my entire life. I know how her biology works and what our eggs look like at all stages of development. So unless this parasite is a very good mimmic, these are in fact premature wrigglers." 

"All.... Alright but how in the fuck would that even possibly happen? How the shit could that ever occur? That's just fucking stupid. They might be good mimmics or whatever. That sounds more logical than... than..."

"Right. Which is why we'll look into it more," she assured. "However, I would like to point out that the 'holding sac' that people sometimes use to keep genetic material in for short periods of time is not actually meant for that. It's a primitive leftover that would have, in fact, been used to carry eggs before they're ready to be laid." 

"But that's not what it's for anymore!! Have you both been eating a steady diet of nothing but sopor for the past perigee without my knowledge?"

"They also do not seem to be deteriorating or eating any of your insides. Whatever they are, they seem to be certainly incubating. And have been doing so, judging by their age and how long you've been sick, since you had sex," Jade said. "That is also the only time that anything would have been able to get into that particular part of your body to put anything there. It makes perfect sense to me." 

"Although, there has never really been anything to indicate that he could possibly be capable of producing eggs. The organ hasn't functioned for several hundred thousand sweeps," Kanaya said. 

Your bloodpusher flipped. That wasn't entirely true. That wasn't true at all and the fact that it wasn't true coupled with pieces quickly filling up the holes in a puzzle to create a disturbing picture was making you sick.

You looked away from them and held your head in your arms, fingers clutching at your hair. "Actuallythereisathing," you mumbled into your sleeves. 

"Pardon?"

You pulled your mouth away from your sleeve for a moment.

"There is a thing," you said. You sounded distinctly guilty and didn't meet their eyes. You wanted to vomit.

"What thing?"

"Um..."

You hesitated and fidgeted. You didn't even know how to begin explaining this. You felt like you were going to throw up again.

"I um... okay, so..." you tried to start. They waited with their eyes stuck into you. "So I've kind of had this problem since I was around 6 and a half where um... Well, I thought that it was like... Um..."

They didn't say anything. They just waited.

"So it's kind of like, well... Okay, so every, about, three perigees, I started getting this thing where, well, honestly, what I really thought it was was that I was for some reason building up a lot of genetic material and that I had a hormone problem from my mutation. Like, every three perigees, I kind of just, well, at first I thought I was releasing excess genetic material or something. It lasts like three days and it makes my stomach hurt and I feel like horrible shit and I always ended up ruining my pants, and it's just disgusting on all levels, which is why I didn't tell anyone about it." 

You didn't look at them and just forced yourself to keep talking. 

"And uh, eventually I realized that that wasn't what genetic material looks like and, I was, like, bleeding. And I thought that I probably had cancer or something and I was probably going to die from whatever was causing it at some point," you said. "And then Rose randomly decided to educate us all on human anatomy and female reproductive atrocities."

"You... have a menstrual cycle."

"I don't know. I didn't think that was what it was. I thought I was dying and the parallels with human reproduction never really meant anything to me. Then this happened and I thought that maybe it was just all of whatever was wrong with me coming to head," you said. "Rose knows about it because I needed to ask her for things to keep myself from bleeding on crap." 

"So you have a functioning reproductive bladder." 

"I don't fucking know."

"It would appear that it functions pretty damn well." 

"If that's what this is."

"It's seeming fairly definitive."

"But we don't know."

"We'll keep an eye on you, then. Until we figure out how to properly test it." 

"What if it kills me before you can see how stupid that diagnosis is."

"We won't let that happen. And in all honesty, you seem fairly healthy, considering. They don't appear to be hurting you."

"Even if they are wrigglers, I don't want them. I don't care what they are. I want them out of me. Get them out." 

There was a very long silence.

"I think that if we had figured this out earlier, then that would have been a more plausible course of action," Kanaya said. "And it would probably have solved the problem easily. However, they are more than half way to maturity and you'll probably lay them naturally in about three perigees."

"I don't fucking care. I don't want them. What would we do when they hatch? What the fuck are we going to do with a bunch of wrigglers?"

Another long pause.

"We'll have to figure that out, then, because I don't think we know anyone with the surgical skill to remove them without endangering your health," Jade said. "I'd agreed to help figure out what was wrong to see if there was anything that could be done. I didn't guarantee that I could actually do any necessary surgery." 

More silence.

"And, how many are there?"

"Four."

You remember getting up after that and going to Jade's ablution block to be sick. 

Now you're stuck in Kanaya's hive so that she can keep watch of your condition and make sure your health is not threatened. Jade comes over every couple of weeks with her stupid ultrasound device so that they can examine you. 

You pretty much live in this respiteblock. 

You can't wrap your head around the idea that this is happening. You stare down at your mound of a stomach and all you see is just that. You've been shown the ultrasound pictures. You've felt them move. 

But you just can't imagine that there is something there, that's going to come out of you, that's going to somehow grow into a person; let alone that there are fucking four of them. 

You brave your disgust and pull your shirt up to expose stretched grey skin. There is still nothing about it that can convince you. 

It seems too impossible. 

You press your palm over it again and you can feel your own touch. You know it's a part of you. You know it's real, but it just seems, so distant, somehow. It doesn't make any sense. 

You jump at a sudden knock at the door and hastily cover your stomach. 

"Yeah?" 

Kanaya opens the door. "I was going to make lunch and wanted to know what you wanted."

"Oh, um... Just, whatever's fine. I'll probably eat anything, to be honest." 

"Okay. Do you feel okay?" 

She wont stop asking that and she always sounds so unsure when she's talking to you. It completely catches all the words in your throat. She's so hard to talk to lately.

"Yeah, I feel fine." 

"Alright," she says. "Rose is probably going to come home in about a week for holiday break." 

"Alright," you say. You guess that at least you'll have someone to talk to (at). 

"Also, I figured I'd ask you about this first before agreeing, but Dave actually requested to be able to stay here for a little while," she said.

"Dave?" you say. 

"Yes. He asked Rose first, which is logical considering their familial relationship. He's apparently having a hard time keeping a job and cannot pay his rent," she explains. 

"So he just wants to bum it here?" you say. 

"I don't know if 'bumming it' is his intention, but essentially, I suppose so," she says. 

You don't want him to see you. He is absolutely the last person- or well, second to last person- that you'd ever want to see you right now. 

"Please don't turn your hive into a charity for our friends that have become losers incapable of supporting themselves or growing beyond pupation age," you say.

You carefully sit down in your desk chair. 

"Last I recall you were unable to keep a job for the exact same reason he can't," she says with some kind of combination of sternness and compassion on her tongue. "And are now also staying at my hive."

"I'm staying at your hive because my body has a quality equatable to 'leaky piss wagon'," you say. "Not because I can't keep my hive stem. Those are two completely different things."

"I feel like this altercation is entirely pointless and I would just like to know if you'd be okay with him staying here, considering everything," she says. 

"Can he stay at Jade's?" you ask.

"You know why he can't stay at Jade's," she says dully. 

"And he seriously has no where else that he can be. John's? Couldn't he stay at John's?" you plea. 

"If you don't want him here..."

"Fuck." You run your hand through your unclean and unkept hair. "I don't want him stuck being a pathetic asshole on the streets or something, and I actually haven't seen him in a while and I really wanted to keep the whole 'good bros' thing going with him, but shit, I don't know how to explain this to him."

You chew at your nails in thought. 

"And, even if I did, this is Dave we're talking about. His whole life plan is basically, 'if I don't get something, I'm going to find every possible way to avoid the fact that it exists'." 

"Maybe we won't tell him and let him just think whatever he thinks of your appearance," she suggests. 

"And he'll be here for how long? Because if he's here for more than a perigee and a half, we're going to have a problem," you say.

And as you say it, realization starts to creep into the corners of your mind, poised to strike, ready to constrict you into panic. You try to shrug it off for now. You try not to think about it.

"He'd be here until he finds another job," she says. 

"And who the fuck knows how long that'd take," you say.

"According to Rose, Dave likes being independent, and she doesn't think he'd like to let himself stay here for too long," she says. "He'd probably stay for human Christmas and try to be gone within a week or so afterward." 

"Alright, well clearly, you don't actually want my opinion on it here so I don't really understand why you bothered to ask. All you had to say is that Strider is happening. I don't fucking care. Open up a goddamned cacoon and breakfast for all I care," you spit.

She inhales through her nose and stares at you, lips tight. 

She's gotten a lot older, especially around the eyes. 

You want to take your words back and shove them as far down your own throat as possible. 

This isn't your hive. You don't get to make these decisions. 

"I asked you, because I want you to know what's happening, and I don't want you to feel stuck," she says, more calmly than you'd anticipated. "Although, yes, I suppose Dave coming to stay was still the inevitable decision. 

"Great. Don't tell him I'm here and keep him away from me unless I say otherwise."


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you everyone for the comments and support thank you so much <3
> 
> I wasn't thinking that this chapter would be done so fast? And I've been debating on weather or not i should post it yet but i figured since i didn't explain much in the first chapter, i aught to. I also feel like this chapter is less of a second chapter and more of a continuation of the first chapter and should have been a part of it in the first place.
> 
> This wont be indicative of my regular updating speed. It will probably end up being between 1 and 3 weeks between updates. I just had a day off today and accidentally wrote a chapter....
> 
> Ahh nothing like procrastinating on homework to get you to write a new fanfic chapter way too fast
> 
> Also I illustrated this one. Poorly.

Dave arrives a few days later, before his sibling returns from her educational establishment. The door blows open wide as soon as Kanaya gives it the smallest amount of leeway, letting gusts of cold, ice, and snow flood into the entry way. 

You retreat from your hiding place on the stairs before you can see anything else, and before he can see you. Your footsteps echo with unfortunately clumsy pounding, and you pray that he doesn't ask questions.

You hear the warped echoes of Kanaya greeting him and the door being latched shut as you walk down the hall, but any sound bleeds away into the background before you make it to your block.

You do not slam the door if only to keep your noise level down.

Not only are you stuck here now, but you also have to hide yourself within your own hiding spot. 

You sit down in your chair, as that has become your default position. 

Kanaya and Rose like to argue about weather or not that's a problem. You should get up and exercise, you should maintain a certain activity level, but at the same time if you do it too much, you could easily hurt yourself. 

You are basically suspended in a perpetual state of incorrectness. There is always something wrong.

You stare at the coffee table and at the books Kanaya left you about mothergrub biology and egg development and cringe. You don't want to think about that right now. You don't want that to exist in front of you. 

You flip them over so that their covers aren't showing and pull your husktop onto the arm of the chair.

You mindlessly tramp through the internet for about four hours. 

Then you fall asleep. 

Your life is as exciting as it gets.

Sleep envelopes you and drags you back into your subconscious.

You find yourself in Kanaya's living block and your skin seems to be mostly mostly black and red veins. 

There's a big tear in your stomach.

You know it's a tear; the skin looks like ripped cheese cloth. 

Your breathing heightens.

There are fingers running endlessly through your hair, but you can't pinpoint who's hands they are. They dig over your scalp with sharp claws.

You pluck at the torn fibers of your skin. Your stomach is full of maggots. 

"It just happens," someone tells you calmly. The voice is too ambiguous to be recognized, and seems to come at you too fast and too slow.

The other half of the living block seems to have broken.

The floor is gone. There's only murky water. You remember Kanaya telling you about that. There's been a problem with water lately. You remember Kanaya telling you about that.

It's in the way of the nutrition block. You have to walk around it carefully to get there. You should find Kanaya, let her know what happened. Let her know your stomach ripped again.

You take just one step around it, just one, before you mess up and fall into the water.

You sit straight up in your chair and try to figure out how to breathe, how to inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale and inhale and exhale and breathe in and out and in and out and in and out.

You look down at your belly, pull your shirt up hastily. 

The skin is smooth and firm and perfectly fine. It's fine. You're fine. You're fine you're find you're fine.

Breathe in and out and in and out and in and out. Breathe. Breathe breathe. 

You're sweating.

You shouldn't go to sleep without sopor. You know that.

You get yourself out of the chair with a bit of struggling to walk to the ablution block across the hall to go take a shower.

You turn on the water and drop your clothes on the floor.

The novelty of how weird you look naked will never wear off, but you are still half asleep and your brain is still fairly encased in a fear response, and therefore you only look at your reflection to reaffirm that that dream did not happen.

Your stomach is smooth and round and sticks awkwardly out of your torso. You don't look like you should be able to stand up. You touch it a bit, pressing your full hand over the curve, just to remind yourself. 

You're fine. You're still disgusting looking, but you're fine.

You step into the ablution trap and let the water run over you. 

Okay, time to think of something else. Think of something else. What's happened recently not to do with your current condition?

Something must've happened. There must be something happening. Something something.

Yourstomachrippedandfullofmaggots

Shut up. Shut up.

Something something something. What's something that's happened recently?

Fullofmaggotsrippedtoshreads

Shut up shut up shut up.

It's not a tumor or a deadly parasite. You're not going to die.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. 

"Each egg will probably end up being about the size of a softball."

"What the fuck is a softball?"

You squeeze shampoo into your hand and scrub it through your hair. 

Humans like to make measurements in specific similarly sized objects. Their favored units are softball, baseball, soccerball, football stadium, and Texas.

Rippedupandfullofmaggots.

Sometimes they will use 'house' as a measurement as well. 'House' is usually used in hyperbole, however, and most things you've heard described as 'the size of a house' are in fact significantly smaller than a house. 

"A softball is a human throwing sphere that is approximately eleven inches in diameter." 

"Why do you know that?"

Your hair becomes thick with lather. You touch your own horns a little bit. It's methodical and feels nice, especially with the warmth of the shower.

You've also heard things be described as 'the size of a barn'. You do not know what a barn is. You imagine from what you've heard it used in comparison to, that it is of similar size to a well muscled human male.

You believe a barn is some kind of electronic appliance. You have nothing to base this assumption on. It's just what comes to mind.

Splitupskinbleedingmaggots

You rinse the lather from your hair and let it flood down your body.

"I had to look it up. Also, eggs are in fact between ten and thirteen inches." 

You forget how much an inch is. Kanaya is used to using human measurements. She lives with a human.

"That's between twelve and fifteen fractsteps." 

You squeeze conditioner into your hand and run it through your hair. 

You usually imagine a barn to be some large rectangular prism shaped primitive computer, like the one's you've seen on the colorless televised programs that occasionally play on certain channels. 

The programs usually follow absurd science that you do not believe could ever possibly make sense, even to the people who wrote them. 

They usually contain both humans and trolls on them. It's weird. It's weird that this alterniearth mishmash planet just accepts that that is its past, that they've both always been there. 

You rinse out the conditioner and begin scrubbing yourself with soap. 

There's too much to adjust to. There's just way too much to adjust to. You still have nightmares about the game, and sometimes things will remind you of it so much you'll be sent to the ground in a shaking fit of wild heartbeats. You are in an unfamiliar place that doesn't make sense. 

And now you don't even have your own body to yourself. 

Rippedupandfullofmaggotsmaggotsmaggots

You rinse yourself off and step out of the ablution trap. 

And you've got to hide yourself from Strider now too.

wellyoudon'thavetoyoucouldtalktohimyoucouldhaveaniceconversationwithhimhe'salwaysgreattotalktohemightmakeyoufeelbetter

God, they're moving again. 

"You'll probably stop feeling them once they develop a hard shell." 

"When will that be?" 

"Probably in the last perigee."

God fucking dammit, they're moving again. 

Your wrap yourself in a towel and walk back across the hall with your clothes bundled under your arm. 

You throw your clothes on your desk chair.

You dig through your wardrobe for something clean that will fit you. You find sweatpants at the least. All of your shirts that are big enough are dirty. 

Your growl and swear frustratedly. You don't want to deal with this. You don't fucking want to deal with it. 

You lean against the wall and slide down onto the floor. You pull on your hair a bit.

You don't want to deal with this. You don't want to deal with this. 

You can't do this. You can't do anything. You just want to sleep for the rest of your existence. You're so tired of doing things. You don't want to do this. 

How did this even happen? Why is this even possible?

It cannot be real. I just physically can't be.

Ifyouhadn'tgoneandtriedthatfriendswithbenefitsthing

Yet, your belly is swollen and you can feel them move and you can touch the world around you.

You sit there and stare at the ceiling for a very long time without a shirt on. 

You don't look away until you hear a knock on your door. 

You can't figure out how to respond to the knock for a second. You don't want to make any noise. It might break something.

Then there's another knock. 

You've got to just do it. You don't really want to.

One more knock.

"Yeah?"

Kanaya comes in and closes the door behind her. She looks at you with concern and confusion. 

"I ran out of shirts," you say.

She sighs and sits down next to you.

"I'll get you some tomorrow," she says. "I guess, you'll just have to wear a dirty one for now."

"I'll give you money for it. Just plain t-shirts," you say. "Don't get anything weird."

"You don't have to pay..."

"They're my clothes. I want to pay for it," you insist. It would give you some sense of control. "I'll give you money."

You force yourself up and she immediately tries to assist you. You do just fine, though.

You walk over to the jacket you keep your wallet in and pull it out of the pocket. You don't have much money left.

"Dave arrived today," she tells you. 

"I know. I saw," you say. You pull out about how much you think three new shirts will cost. You aren't left with a lot.

"I haven't told him you're here," she says. "He's got the block up on the fourth level on the left."

"Alright, I'm probably not ever going up there anyway," you say. You hand her the money.

"Large t-shirts, probably?" she says, taking it.

"Yeah." 

You sit back down next to her.

"Due to human sleeping habits, you probably should be able to avoid him fairly easily," she says.

"Dave has dumb sleeping habits for a human," you say.

"Well, he's gone to sleep for now. He claimed to be quite tired," she says. "Which is logical considering now would be about the time when humans would be asleep and he's apparently been traveling all night."

"Okay," you say. "I should probably go get something to eat, then." 

"Yes, you should definitely eat. Have you not eaten yet?" Dammit, she's concerned again. 

"I ate lunch and breakfast and shit. I just slept through dinner. I'm fine, don't worry about it," you say. 

"There's food downstairs if you want it, then," she says. "Just, put a shirt on first." 

You again pull yourself into a standing position and go to find whatever shirt smells the least awful so that you can go eat something, because as it turns out, you are really kind of starving. 

You both go down to the nutrition block. There is leftover pizza. You warm up four slices in the microwave production box.

You sit down at the table with Kanaya.

"So has anything interesting happened? Or anything not interesting? Really, anything at all," you say, biting into a slice of pizza.

"Oh, well..." she says. She glances around the kitchen like there might be an answer on one of the corners. "Hm... Rose has been very stressed with her schooling and she is concerned that her grades have been dropping. I think this break will be a good thing. I'm going to try and get her to relax a bit."

You nod, just glad to have someone talk to you about something that's got nothing to do with your problems. The cheese of the pizza stretches instead of breaking so you have to bite it off.

"I'm a bit concerned about her. I'd like to hope she hasn't completely worked herself too hard, but I'm not sure that that's a likely possibility," she says. 

"You have too much shit," you say before you swallow. "You should try to relax. Relax together. Have a relaxing adventure. Relax so hard that you relax to death. Then have a death so relaxing you don't even know you're gone."

"Mmm... I'd like to, but there are so many things going on right now," she says. "I'm looking forward to the holidays, though. Oh!"

She gets up, her chair scraping on the floor tiles. 

"Do you want to see what I got Rose for human Christmas and/or Twelth Perigee's?" she says, grabbing two postal boxes from the top of the thermal hub. They have already been opened.

"Sure." You finish the pizza slice quite quickly. 

"Here," she says. "It arrived today." 

She pulls several new balls of yarn out of the box. One is pale peachy pink, another is a cool mint color and there's another that's a deep reddish purple. "I also ordered her a necklace, but it hasn't come in yet," she says. 

"Well that's fucking adorable."

You poke the yarn and it's extremely soft. 

"And, I got her this... thing. Which is supposed to be calming," she says. 

She pulls this from the smaller of the two boxes. It's a sort of flat metal disc with a maze type pattern embossed into it. It comes with a small metal needle type thing.

"How is it relaxing?" you ask.

"You trace over the grooves with the stylus. It's meditative," she says. "I got you some things as well, but I'm not showing you those." 

"Well, I wouldn't expect you to," you say. In your mind, you feel somehow surprised that she got you anything. You don't know why. It seems logical that she would, you're just always surprised.

You feel bad. You haven't gotten anyone anything yet. You'll have to fix that. At least that will give you something to do. 

You focus on eating for a second.

"So," she says. "Have you looked at those books I gave you?" 

"No," you say flatly. 

"Karkat, you really, really need to," she says. "Really. And I think it might give you some peace of mind if you knew what was going on."

"I don't want to know," you say, taking another bite. "I don't want to think about it." 

"Please at least skim them," she says.

"What good will that do?" you say. 

"It's important for you to know," she says. "It might help with your worry if you knew."

You put the remainder of the slice in your mouth. 

"I don't care what's happening in my guts. I just want them out, and then to forget this ever happened," you say.

"Right. And, have you given any thought of what you'd like to do with them once they are no longer inside of you?" she asks. 

You pause. 

"I'll figure it out eventually," you say. 

"Karkat, you don't have that much time."

"Could you maybe stop reminding me of that? I don't want to think about this shit all the time," you snap.

She looks at her own hands folded up on the table.

"I know. I don't want to pressure you. We just really need to figure out what to do with them," she says. "We can't exactly assign them lusii and register them." 

"What, you don't think I know that? I have no idea what to do with a bunch of grubs," you say. "I don't want them like, ending up without proper lusi. I know that, but I don't know how that'd be a thing."

"Jade offered to adopt one, possibly two if she can," she says. You know that. You'd be alright with that. 

You can picture her studying grubs, being curious, too curious, forgetting they're people. But she also mgiht learn how to take care of them quickest of anyone you know. She'd master it in no time, like she does with so many other things. She's also just spectacular at taking care of creatures that you'd hope that would translate into people as well. 

"Just as long as she doesn't treat them like an experiment, I already said I was cool with that," you say. "That doesn't take care of the problem, though. They'd still be unregistered."

"We could potentially get Sollux to take care of that," she says thoughtfully. "But I think getting them some kind of pseudolusi is the most important first step here."

"Alright, yeah..." you say. 

"I... I might talk to Rose about one. If she'd be okay with it," she says.

"Okay..." you say. You wouldn't argue against that too much. You have no doubt that Kanaya would take excellent care. You're not sure about Rose, though. You're not sure if she can properly take care of herself, let alone something else. "Do we know anyone else who wouldn't be terrible for this?"

"I don't know. I'll have to think a bit more," she says. Then she hesitates. 

"The um, other genitor," she says, slowly and carefully. "Whoever, they are... You... Don't think they might be interested? Or that they should know?"

"No. I don't think so. And I'd prefer they didn't know," you say. You definitely mean it. "They don't have to go through this shit. Just because they contributed genetic material doesn't make it their problem." 

"Okay. However you feel," she says.

You start a new slice of pizza.

It occurs to you that their genes are in these wrigglers, and that they will probably have their blood color, their horn shape, their facial features.

And your blood color, horn shape, and facial features.

"They're going to end up being mutants, or them," you say.

"What?"

"They're either going to have my blood color, or they're going to be just like them," you elaborate.

"Yes. That's how it will happen," she says. "So, we are going to find out who this person was eventually. It might be easier for you to just tell us."

"Not now."

"No, it doesn't have to be now. But some time..."

You both sit in silence while you finish the pizza on your plate. It's somewhat awkward, and you keep feeling like you should say something, but at the same time feel like the silence is kind of nice, and that there is nothing you want to say. 

She looks very tired. Her eyes are ringed with a darker grey than usual.

She plays with the gift she bought for Rose, the meditative one, while you eat. 

When you finish, you get up to put the plate in the sink and rinse it off. 

You could go back upstairs, but decide to sit back down instead.

"So are you doing okay?" she asks you.

"What?"

"Are you doing okay? I know you're in a shit situation right now," she says. "If you need to talk about any of it, you can."

"Oh, Yeah, I uh..." You pause and drum your fingers on the table. "I guess I'm having a hard time just, accepting that it's a thing? But..."

She nods. "I'm still... not completely capable of wrapping my head around it either," she admits. "It's a lot."

"Yeah, it's like, I was ready to just do normal shit for a while, adjust to this planet, try to rebuild my hive like you did, and then all this happens?" you say. "It's like one final fuck you from the universe." 

She nods some more. "Try to look at it as something positive if you can. And if you can't, you've still got plenty of time to be alive after this is over," she says. 

You sometimes forget that it will be over and you'll be able to move on. Somehow, you'll be able to move on. 

You rest your head on your hand and stare at the wood of the table and nod. 

"It's just way too much shit at once," you say. 

"Do you need to vent?" she asks. 

You feel like you should ask her the same thing. You look away in contemplation.

"Go ahead. Say whatever you need to."

You take a deep breath.

"I couldn't deal with the stuff that was already happening and now I have this, that I also can't deal with, and my not being able to deal with it is apparently dangerous to my health, which makes it both harder to deal with and significantly more stressful, and it's just generally a disgusting and uncomfortable situation to be in? Like, I was starting to actually be okay with how my body was and now it's just so completely fucked up and revolting that that's all gone now."

You swallow.

"I fucking, barely recognize myself and I look so repulsive and feel so repulsive... And I don't have any control at all and I fucking hate that, I hate it so much. This massive mound of shit was just shat out of the universe's tightest asshole on me when I wasn't even looking and now I've got to walk around covered in universe shit and it's getting all crusty and sticking to my skin and it's fucking disgusting." 

She's looking at you attentively and nodding. 

"So no, I guess, I'm not doing okay. I don't know what's happening to me, and those books might tell me how eggs develop inside of a mothergrub, but they're not going to tell me what the hell my body is doing to itself. I don't know if I'm actually going to come out of this alright. I don't know if I'm going to be okay when it's over. I don't know how all of this is going to go down. I'm really fucking terrified and there's nothing I can do." 

You hate that you're crying now. 

"And I have even fucking less emotional control now, which is bullshit. I keep getting upset for no fucking reason. I fucking cried about losing at solitaire yesterday," you continue.

"I was playing the game for lonely pieces of shit, with human cards that have quadrants on them, and then I lost, and cried."

You find yourself half laughing and half crying through that last statement. It just seems so absurd.

"I'm a fucking dork," you say, laughing. "A fucking pregnant dork."

Kanaya smiles oddly with you and rubs your hand soothingly from across the table. 

She lets you cry until you're exhausted, holding your hand until you put your head down on the table, when she moves her chair over and switches to rubbing your back. 

It feels like hours until you stop, but it probably hasn't at all been that long.

"Hormones will make you emotional. Stress will make you emotional. Your situation is very stressful," she says reassuringly. "And you are going to come out of this just fine. I know about tending to the mothergrub, and I am thoroughly researching human pregnancy as well to gain any insight I can. I am going to make sure you're alright." 

You've stopped crying at this point and have just made yourself fatigued. The side of your face is resting on the table.

You nod. 

"Thank you." 

She rubs your back in neat soothing circles, over and over, smooth and nice, and your breathing returns to normal. 

"Do you need to vent?" you ask her. This accidentally turned into a feelings jam. Oh well. 

You wonder if you may have accidentally become moirails over the past perigee. 

She thinks for a second and then says, "I was mostly worried about getting you to let some of your tension go, and for now I think that is solved."

"You seemed stressed about Rose," you point out. 

"Hmm..." She pauses in rubbing your back for just a second before resuming. "She has been concerning me quite a bit. She takes studying a bit too seriously. But when she is here, I will be less worried. You have also been concerning me, but I am feeling a bit less of that now that I know how you're feeling and that you've gotten some of it out." 

That doesn't feel like a proper ventilation. She's holding things back in your favor. You wish she'd just let herself feel things properly. 

"You can tell me about it any time you want," you say. "I have nothing to do. Like, ever." 

She smiles and says, "Thank you. I will keep that in mind."

"Also," you say. "I don't think that hiding from Dave actually makes a lick of sense."

"Mmm. I don't either," she agrees.

"So, I guess just..." You aren't sure how to do this. You still aren't particularly keen on telling him. "I guess just tell him I'm here and let him think I'm fat for now."

"That sounds reasonable," she says. 

You sit silently before one more worry comes to mind.

She stops rubbing your back when you sit up.

"What if he thinks I look gross?"

She sits back in her chair. 

"Then I suppose he'll think you look gross. I doubt it will make him change his overall opinion of you," she says. 

Now you have to be anxious about Dave seeing you and your awful distended stomach. Awesome. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the shortness of this chapter. There will be a doodle to go with it soon probably

You roll over onto your side. The bed is so soft this morning. The sheets smell like soap and are so nice on your skin. You could live in this softness, bathed in the haze of sleep with contently shut eyes for the rest of your life and there would be no regrets. You could stay in these blankets until you peacefully left the world behind.

You wouldn't care. You wouldn't mind.

You press your face into the blankets and decide to sleep for just a bit longer. The bed is never this soft or comfortable. It's quite pleasantly unusual. Your mattress springs are shot to shit. There shouldn't be a reason for them to be this nice. 

Also, they aren't.

You open your eyes and recall that you did not go to bed in your own apartment. The walls are painted a calm green and the comforter you are currently wrapped in is covered in a small floral pattern. There are floral patterns everywhere. Someone just grabbed all the floral patterns they could, shoved them into their mouths and, when their digestive system couldn't handle the onslaught, promptly vomited it all over this room in particular.

You don't live here. 

You stare up at the ceiling. You're staying with Rose. Or, well, you're staying with Kanaya for now until Rose get's back. You have no idea how or why your sister decided to go to college. 

You don't know how she got in, honestly. The school systems here are weird. They combined troll schools with human schools and they're really kind of frightening. There's lots of brain downloading for basic stuff, which is creepy and you don't want to partake in it. 

You don't know how the freaky troll-human college institution things, with whatever complicated compound word they've been given as a name, go about teaching their students. 

All you know is that, firstly, Rose would like to be a therapist or perhaps someone who creates psychological profiles for criminals, fucking shocker, and secondly, one of the requirements for applying to the school was basic hand-to-hand combat, along with an essay about why you deserved to be there and what the purpose of the universe was and an infinite number of blah blah blahs. You could easily get in. But you're not interested right now. You're going to take a break first, get adjusted, figure out the social norms, figure out how to keep a single job and get a good night's sleep. You need a break. 

You can work on your music. Not just writing lyrics, but the actual music. You've looked into schools for that, and you've looked into schools for business and into schools for teaching and schools for engineering and schools for becoming a goddamned interstellar pilot because why the hell not. 

You'll figure it out. 

You roll over onto your stomach.

You'll figure something out.

You still don't live here.

You lie in this bed for a while, letting your brain get eaten alive by thoughts of where you should go from here, where you should go to get another job, how you possibly let yourself fuck up the finances so bad, how it would be to have a job in an instrument store, how it would be to find someone with soft skin and moving muscles to pleasantly kiss on the mouth, to caress softly, slip inside of........

Until you feel disgustingly sweaty in the now too-warm blankets and you can no longer find a comfortable position, because your stomach is suddenly loudly and painfully empty, and you must force yourself up. You push the covers aside and stand, stretching your back until your shoulders crack, and walk out of the room to try and navigate the not-so-unfamilliar hive.

It's not as though you've never been here.

You lazily walk to the staircase, flick the switch that turns on the little lamps that keep humans from tripping down the steps, and walk down in a slump. Everything feels predictably empty, your soft footsteps still making too much noise. You pay little attention to what you're doing. 

Your steps are rhythmic, one after the other, easy to count. They're predictable, measurable. Step....Step....Step....Step....

And you make it just a short way down the staircase, until suddenly the floor's traction is alarmingly missing and your foot is not where you put it and you have to catch yourself on the banister in a fit of gasped curses to keep yourself away from serious injury.

You swear and push yourself back into a standing position like it didn't even happen. 

That wasn't a thing that just happened.

Your foot, you realize though, is now slimy and cold. You look first at your foot and then back at where you stepped. There is a little glob of smeared green slime on the stair that perfectly matches what has lightly glazed your foot. Your gaze moves to the wall, where there is a streak of green running about two feet before it fades away.

You shrug it off as probably Kanaya. Maybe she's messier than she leads on. It's not a very startling mystery. You've stayed with trolls before. You know they have a tendency to track sopor all over the place sometimes.

Of course, you've really only known Terezi and Karkat to do that. There are probably other trolls that they brought back after the game ended that do the same. You aren't particularly close with any of them. They didn't really stick around each other and for the most part, they all fled to do their own things.

The relationships between them aren't exactly tight at the moment, and you couldn't be bothered to call it any of your business. It's got nothing to do with you. They'll keep in touch with whoever they keep in touch with.

You don't pay any more attention to the sopor and continue down the stairs a bit more carefully, watching for and avoiding any globs of green. Luckily, the sopor doesn't seem to have made it all the way to the bottom of the stairs before running out.

You proceed to where you know the kitchen is to find something to eat for breakfast. All of the blinds in the front room and the one window in the hall are drawn shut tight. It's pretty dark considering the clock in your room had said 12:30. Maybe it was actually 12:30 at night?

What time did you even go to bed? How long did you sleep? Have you slept for way too long or did you just take a nap?

Wait, no. Trolls hate light. 

You're just used to Kanaya's hive being brightly lit. You've never really seen it dark accept for at night. She keeps the windows open, usually. The blocked windows are weird. 

You continue to the doorway to the kitchen, when you see that the kitchen isn't empty and that someone is rummaging through the fridge. Light streams from the open door, and it's the only light in the room. The window over the sink has been thoroughly blocked. 

It's easy to tell they're not Kanaya. You can see that they haven't got her horns, or any semblance of her grace. You fumble on the wall for the light switch, burning your eyes with scalding light and procuring a loud hiss and a slammed refrigerator door from the other person. 

"SHIT fucking shit what the fucking fuck, don't just, you don't just turn lights on like that, you don't just freaking do that you... what are you even doing Kan- Strider?"

Until your eyes adjust, no one is happy. Turning the light on is regarded overall as a bad decision.

"Karkat?"

Shit. Oh, fucking shit. Did you actually leave your shades upstairs? Do you even care?

The light is new and strange and the room becomes alarmingly stark and defined beneath the florescence. You blink and, yup, that's Karkat, standing there apparently post slamming everything he was holding down on the counter. His fingers are in his eyes, and when he pulls them away he's squinting so much you wonder why he doesn't just shut them. He turns away from you entirely after that so that you can only see his back.

"Turn that shit back off!"

"Nah, I'm getting cereal and would prefer not to grope blindly through the cupboards only to pull out a fresh box of dried crispy grub snacks. Sounds like a bad time and I don't do bad times," you say. 

"Turn it off or I swear on every fucking tendril of the gods, I will gut you where you stand, make it into a fashionable scarf, sell it on human etsy for a price reflecting the effort I put into it, and completely screw up the first time I've seen you in like a year," he says, still facing the counter and not looking at you. His voice kind of lowers in intensity during that last part. 

His hair is completely slicked back with sopor, a black plastic shell to his head that's glistening with green. You can actually see all of his horns for once and they look weirdly long without his hair obstructing them. They're still smaller than any other troll's horns, but they seem strangely disproportional to his head like that. They are apparently curved slightly, which you didn't know. His whole head feels small without the mess of his hair.

His shirt and pants are dry, although the very edges where the hem hits the floor is soaked with slime. 

He doesn't look how you remember him. You've never seen him just out of bed. It's like he's a different person, and jeez, wow, he's right. It's been almost a year since you've talked to him face to face.

"Yes, good to see you too. Glad you finally decided to turn up somewhere," you say, ignoring his request and going for the cupboard above the counter he's standing in front of. 

"Please just turn the goddamned light off," he insists.

You pull the cabinet doors open and he darts to the other side of the kitchen as soon as you start looking. And then the lights are gone and everything is pitch black again.

"Ah, yes. Yes, I see. It's a scavenger hunt, then," you say. "A blind scavenger hunt for some breakfast. This must be the way you crazy trolls great people after disappearing. I can feel myself becoming more culturally educated."

You wait a second for a reply and there is only silence. Maybe he's rusty and can't think of comebacks as quickly, or maybe he's just gone and left. You can't sense him anywhere. There's nothing that feels like a body anywhere around you. You've still got that instinct. It's been drilled into your head.

"Karkat?"

No reply. 

You cross the kitchen to turn the light back on, and when the room is illuminated again, no one is there. You look down the hall, which is almost completely dark, but with the light from the kitchen pouring into it, you can sort of make out a figure walking away.

"Hey, dude, wait!"

He doesn't turn around and you hear him take a step onto the flight of stairs. The first step is somewhat squeaky and his footsteps are anything but light. He doesn't stop, you're not going to be able to make him, and you don't think chasing him is probably the thing to do.

The whole encounter kind of tastes bad to you, though. You don't know why. It just makes you uncomfortable. He even left his food on the counter, which is a tupperwear container full of... something that looks revolting.

You grab the thing off the counter, get a box of cereal from the cupboard, and decide to go after him anyway. He's apparently being pretty slow on the stairs, so you have no trouble catching up to him. He's also leaning against the wall the whole time. The staircase is dully lit, with the only light coming from the occasionally placed lamps. 

"Hey, you forgot this" you say when you get within a few feet of him.

He stops and doesn't turn around. You continue up the stairs to stand next to him and he visibly stiffens.

"You left your gross probably-somehow-grub-based food on the counter ," you say, extending it to him.

He doesn't want to look at you, but this is the first time you've gotten any kind of a decent look at him other than his back. He looks very, very different. It's not only from the slicked back hair, which is allowing you to see the actual entirety of his face for once. His forehead is covered in acne, which for trolls is apparently black. 

Your eyes very quickly glance down the rest of his body and fuck, fuck, fuck, you forgot that you're not wearing your shades. He notices and glares at you before taking the container. 

"I'm going through a molt," he says quickly, seemingly without prompt. He also sounds weirdly nervous as he does so and makes far too much effort to look you in the eye. 

"Okay?" 

He's gained quite a lot of weight, mostly around his midsection. He usually was a little on the pudgy side, though. You don't really care, to be honest. You suppose it's kind of weird how it's all in one place and how perfectly round he looks, but you don't really dwell on it.

"You get fat for a while and then it goes away, alright? Peel your ganderbulbs off of my corpse this fucking instant," he snaps. 

"And, it's great to see you too," you say. "What are you doing here?" 

"Oh you know, wasting my life being brutally fucked by my own body," he says. "Wait wait, that didn't come out right. Wait..."

"Oh, shit Kat, woah, didn't need to know the grimy details yet. Jeez, just wanted to know how you wound up at the Maryam-Lalonde tower of lesbian witchcraft," you say. 

"The molt thing, Strider. I'm talking about the molt thing," he says, again making more eye contact than is entirely necessary. You're not really sure why he's lying about that, though. "It's annoying and it's making me have to gain a lot of weight temporarily and I am therefore being metaphorically fucked by my bodily functions."

Maybe he's not lying. He does things like that sometimes where he's just overly insistent. He's probably doing the molt thing, whatever that entails, and is just making sure you're aware, probably so that you don't bother him too much. 

"Ah," you say. "By the way, I'm probably going to be making fun of you for that."

"I'd be insulted if you didn't," he says. 

"Yeah. Be prepared for lot's of halfassed or possibly fullassed jokes, probably centering around the fact that you look like you're nine months pregnant."

"What?"

"You look like human ladies do when they're in the midst of reproducing," you say. 

He stares at you for a second without saying anything. His face doesn't even look angry. He just looks nervous. 

"So be prepped for insults. I will expect comebacks. This is your homework. There will in fact be a test," you continue. 

He continues to not say a word and it's really weird. 

"You may need to write an essay specifically explaining how and why my bodily odors could destroy us all one day. At least one page, in all caps, possibly some asterisks for emphasis," you say. "Also, we should probably at some point stop the insult parade and catch up or something. It's been forever." 

"Yeah, we'll do that. I'm going to go back to sleep," he says. He does look pretty exhausted. "We'll catch up tonight or something." 

"Alright. I've gotta go eat and stuff," you say.

"Yeah."

He turns around and continues his awkward and somewhat slow trek up the stairs. You turn away and go back down to the kitchen.

You had no idea trolls went through molts, or what a molt actually is. Isn't a molt when birds lose all their feathers? You're curious but also figure that you don't want to know about what is probably essentially troll puberty. 

You just pour yourself some cereal and try to figure out what you should do with yourself while the only two other people in the house are nocturnal. You figure that you'll probably play with some tracks you've already started on, or possibly work on some comics or something. 

You'll do something.

\---

Kanaya is a morning person, apparently. She get's up around 6:30 and greets you in the living room, her hair still wet from showering. 

"How was your night? Did you sleep well?"

"Yeah, it was fine. You?"

"Fine, thankyou."

She has a bagel on a plate that she places on the coffee table. She sits down next to you, momentarily too preoccupied by her phone to actually eat it. Her slender fingers tap out a fairly lengthy text while her face scrunches up in concentration. 

"This isn't gonna be like on the meteor again, is it?" you say. "With me, you, Rose and Vantas? I don't know if I can do another meteor Christmas."

"Vantas?" she picks up. "I didn't tell you he was here, did I?" 

"Nah. I ran into him this morning," you say.

"Oh. I was planning to mention it to you today, but apparently the purrbeast is out of the storage sack," she says. 

She bites into the bagel. 

\---

Karkat comes down a while later, complaining of incredible ravenousness and back pain. He eats anything he can find and comes to watch tv.

He sits with you on the ouch for a while without actually talking. You flip channels as though anything might possibly be on and he scrolls through his laptop as though anything interesting might possibly be happening. He keeps moving and adjusting himself. His shirt doesn't really cover his stomach. 

He looks so incredibly exhausted. 

You're not in the mood to be pushing his buttons, though, you decide. You just aren't feeling like it. You're saving it for later. 

"So you gonna tell me where you've been all this time and why you just showed up here?"

"Nope."

He keeps scrolling, occasionally stopping to type something out, his fingers clacking over the keyboard with fast aggression. 

"Oh, come on, you can't just leave me with that. You gotta give me something here. It's been for freaking ever. You can't just shove something at a guy that dry," you whine.

"I will tell you in a thousand years when your soul has become nothing more than a mass of sentient energy that is so far advanced that it can no longer discern or comprehend the concept of emotion," he says bluntly. "How have you been doing this past half sweep? Anything interesting happen I should know about?"

"Stuff doesn't really happen. Everything's painfully mundane," you say. "You just wake up, eat shit, go to work, come home, eat more shit, fall asleep, and wake up. And then you get fired because you're so damned bored at work that you end up making one too many drawings of dicks with the grub sauce and suddenly your yellow-blood manager is flailing about how you're apparently 'wasting fifty packets a day on dick drawings', as though you could waste anything that way."

"Did you seriously get fucking fired and lose your apartment over dick drawings?" he snaps at you. He sounds a little amused. You know he is. He always is.

"You'll never know," you say. "It'll always be a mystery. Did the dicks really happen? Some say they did, and that they haunt the restaurant to this very day, uncomfortably existing in the peripheral vision of an uncomfortable old woman. She's pretty sure some crazy asshole kid's drawn a dick somewhere. She can feel it in her brittle bones, shaking in her puckered loins as she shifts uncomfortably in her grease coated seat. Some kid did a dick. Some goddamned kid did a dick. But where... Where is the dick, Karkat? No one will ever know."

"I see your capacity for figuring out how to stop making words come out of your mouth are at around the level they've always bee," he says. "Never change, Strider. Don't let anyone, no matter how incredibly, incredibly, right they are, tell you that you need to shut your trap. You just keep going. Never stop. Run your mouth until it runs off a fucking cliff and into a ravine, and then let it keep running on completely shattered limb bones. Let that shit fly, be free." 

"Maybe someday it will catch up with your mouth, which has long since run itself into the ground, through the earth's core and fucking barreled it's way out in China, scaring a bunch of random people with the explosive vulgarity that shalt not be tamed under any circumstances regardless of appropriateness," you counter. 

"And then I will fucking almost accidentally piss myself, apparently. I'll be back to continue this incredible cycle of stupid in a second," he says, closing his husktop and getting up. 

He moves weirdly carefully as he gets himself to his feet. He starts to walk out of the room.

"I'll wait for you," you say wistfully, leaning over the chair. "I'll wait for you forever. For as long as it takes..."

"I will remove your dick from your body, Strider."

You can feel the love radiating from him like the heat of a thousand suns. It is glorious and you bask in it's glow.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> alright. decent length chapter this time. i feel like im overdoing the angst a bit and will try to dial it back after this so that it doesnt feel too repetitive.

"You should probably avoid moving around too much, as I have told you literally every single time I've been here. Lie back..."

You groan in protest and lay back on the couch. Jade pulls up your shirt and you swear you weren't that big a week ago. She pulls a tape measure from your pelvis to your ribs and then scribbles down the measurement in her notebook.

She's been keeping extremely detailed account of exactly what changes in your body have occurred. She hasn't yet broken the habit of saying she wishes you'd figured this out earlier so that she could've kept track of the entire thing. She's just so intrigued by it. She wishes she could've been able to document the whole thing. 

"I can't really avoid it. I kind of have to get up to get food and go to the bathroom you know, constantly, as a side effect of having four grubs sitting on my bladder," you say bitterly. 

Jade pulls the tape measure around your stomach horizontally and writes that number down as well. 

"You probably don't need to be eating as much as you are," Kanaya says. "They don't spend quite that many calories and at this point, you seem to just be putting on unnecessary weight." 

Something flares up behind your eyes, in your temples, stemming from somewhere deep in your chest behind your bloodpusher. You clench your fingers, tighten your jaw and glare at her in a way that you never could've imagined.  

"Oh, I'm sorry, really. I fucking apologize with every ounce of sincerity I have in my body. I wasn't aware that that was something that you were supposed to be fucking concerned with," you spit. "Maybe, just maybe, that could possibly be because, wow, fucking shocker coming up here, prep yourselves people, your thinkpan might just bleed out of your auditory canals when you hear this, it isn't actually any of your business how much I'm eating and you should just shut up about it."

Once it's out of your mouth, it simply hangs in the air and rings. It gnaws  at your ears and brain and coats your throat and lungs like an allergen. Kanaya does not reply to you. 

"I didn't realize that you could be more of an ass than normal, but apparently being pregnant has thrown your normal capacity for vocal restraint under a bus," Jade says. "And I didn't realize you had any to begin with." 

Kanaya's lips are a thin line. 

"But you really aught to try and control your food intake," Jade continues. "And you should still be sticking to less processed foods, which I'm going to hope that you are."

"I'm eating all of the stupid 'healthy' food you've been insisting on," you say, only sort of lying. "And taking the vitamins and not making the showers too hot and not screaming at video games and have been pretty much staring at the wall, not doing anything that could possibly be even remotely dangerous. I have basically become chair fungus at this point. Really, I'm not even sure I'm a real person anymore." 

"Good." 

She pulls the ultrasound device out of her bag and the gel and you're still pretty sure that she isn't at all qualified to be reading these things. You don't exactly have other options, though. You can't exactly take this to a real doctor. And you still aren't much of a fan of going to doctors in the first place.

She applies some gel to the curve of your stomach.

You may not be cull-bait grade mutant on this planet, but they're still not really into your blood color as a socially accepted thing. If you were to live in the part of the world that was mostly trolls, you'd probably end up somebody's pet.

And you've been close enough to that already. 

You wince and try to shove the thought back, way back, underneath everything else you'd rather forget. 

Jade presses the stylus onto your belly and you've gotten used to the pressure she puts on it. She drags it to a certain spot and holds it there while she carefully examines the image on the screen. 

There's something in books that you've always read, and it never occurred to you that it was bad. It seemed nice, romantic, incredibly, incredibly, fantastical. It seemed like some kind of sweet dream, but that it could somehow be real, that you could taste it, and if you did, it would've held you with moonlight and drenched you in the sea until your unhappiness became a distant memory.

If you just had someone, every day, who'd pull your hair aside from your face and tell you how much pity they had for you, how much they felt for you, how much they valued your emotions, how much they wanted you to be better, that somehow, you'd get better. If you were loved hard enough, you would be happy. If you were pitied to a certain point, by someone who would never let you go, you'd be happy.

But that is unrealistic, and just plain dumb.

She moves the stylus a bit and "hmmms..."

However, the one trope in all the books you've read, that always made it sound so sweet and comfortable, like the ultimate goal, the best relationship anyone could be in, was that of whoever was the lower blood, usually, being taken care of so nicely. They'd be taken care of so that all of their needs were met and they could have whatever they needed until they were so spoiled that their thighs would curdle, all in exchange for companionship. They'd be coddled in the arms of a higher blood, told how beautiful they were when they couldn't see it in themselves. They'd never let them go, under any circumstances.

And it'd only be fair of them to take care of the highblood's emotions and any other needs they had, almost like a moirail but not quite. Flushed relationships, after all, were much more about physical pleasure than emotional. (Although, moiralegiences were usually portrayed similarly, of course) 

And you did not realize that that was an identical dynamic to that of a pet and its owner. 

"You're getting very close to full term, I think," Jade says. "I think that, actually, you should be being very very careful at this point. Probably borderline bed rest. Your hips might've widened, but your body still isn't really suited to deal with this very well. Too much stress could cause you to lay the eggs prematurely, and they're still a bit shy of being completely ready for that yet." 

"So, still a bit after New Year's?" you say. 

"Most likely." 

That wasn't long away and you still weren't really prepared. You're not sure you'll ever be prepared.

"You're in your last month. We need to be careful," she says. 

She moves the stylus to another part of your belly and shows you the screen. 

"This one hasn't really perked up from last time," she says. "It seems to actually be just getting worse."

You recall that you haven't felt much movement in that area lately.

"It's still underweight and, I'm not saying it's definite, but, there's a chance that it won't hatch," she says. 

"Okay," you say.

That makes your heart sink a bit. You tell yourself that it's because you're going through so much to bring them into existence, you'd like it if it all payed off. You shouldn't be attached to them. Trolls don't get attached to grubs. It's unnatural to be, dangerous even. 

Trolls always produce more grubs than would ever survive. More than half of the mothergrub's brood usually dies every year. It's normal. In fact, if more than one of these grubs hatches you should be lucky. 

And then your heart sinks further. 

"This one, however, seems to have gotten better," she says. "It's looking like it's probably going to end up being alright."

She moves the stylus to another part of your stomach to show you that one. There had been two since the beginning that had been of questionable stability. 

At least one of them is doing alright.

"This one is doing just ridiculously perfect as always," she says as she shows you the third one. That one's the biggest one, and apparently the most on track with normal expectations for development. "And this one's doing fine as well."

She shows you the fourth one.

"Overall, you're doing pretty good. I just think that resting more often right now would be pretty good. Just to be sure," she tells you.

"Especially if you want to wait out Dave living here," Kanaya interjects. "It's cutting it pretty close, especially if we're assuming you'll make it full term."

The way your belly looks, you're not sure that that's going to happen. You're pretty sure your body is going to very soon decide that that is enough, they're not allowed to get any bigger, and they need to be out before it hurts something. And it is absolutely awful to look at. It still looks like it should be more painful than it is.

"Is the constant nausea still a problem?" Kanaya asks.

"A bit," you say. "I haven't actually thrown up in like, a week, though." 

"Alright, that's good..." 

She hands you a cloth, which signifies that you're done with the ultrasound, and you sit up. You wipe the cloth over your stomach to clean off the gel.

"Do we know what we're going to do with them all now?" Jade asks. 

"I've asked Rose and she says she'd consider us taking one. She is going to probably get here this evening and we'll be able to have a proper discussion about it," Kanaya says. "Although, I'm hesitant about it and neither of us are sure we'll be able to. So I think we may need to find another option, unfortunately." 

"Wait, you're not taking one?" you say.

"There's a possibility we won't be able to," she says. "It just might not be feasible currently. Rose seems to feel that it isn't really a commitment she can handle yet." 

That's a frightful step backwards. 

"Okay, uhm, okay what are we going to do, then? What the fuck am I going to do?" you say, trying not to sound panicked. 

"Shush, breathe, we'll get it sorted out. It isn't definite yet. We haven't properly had a discussion about it," Kanaya says. "I don't want to force it on her, though. It wouldn't be good for anyone, including the grub."

You are unable to do the "shush, breathe" thing. 

"You're the one who was insisting that I needed to figure out what to do with them. Why are you telling me to be calm now?"

"The eggs also probably won't hatch for a month and a half or so after they're laid, so we still have time," she continues. "Don't panic. We'll find someone..."

"How? We can't just ask all of our friends like, 'hey, want a lifelong responsibility our culture had never intended for us to have, ever? Well, then do I have some good news for you. Turns out, Vantas can make grubs!' No, we can't do that," you say loudly. "We aren't about to find anyone to take care of them. It doesn't matter how much time we have, we're just not going to be able to. Most of us can't even support ourselves and it's not like we can tell anyone about this." 

"I've been looking into this for a while. There are people that secretly take care of grubs that have lost their lusii," Kanaya says. "We can contact one of those groups. Someone will take care of them."

"That sounds disgustingly shady," you say. "How do you actually know any of those people would do a decent job?" 

"Alright, alright, I'm sorry I brought it up. We'll discuss it later. Keep the stress level minimal," Jade insists. 

"Discussing it later isn't going to fix the problem," you say.

"Discussing it now won't fix it either," Jade says. "All it will do is give you unneeded stress." 

"Oh, so now I can just think about it and be stressed out silently?" you say.

"We can't resolve it right now," Kanaya says. "Worrying about it will not make it better."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?!"

"No, but it's good reason to just breathe and relax," she says. "You just really need to stop thinking about it for now and tell yourself that it will be resolved later. Let's move on for now." 

You don't know what that's going to help with. You have accidentally produced four grubs you can't take care of and there is virtually nothing you can do to find someone who can. You don't know what you're going to do. You don't know how you're going to move on from this.

You can't take care of them yourself. You could just imagine it. You wouldn't ever be able to afford enough food to feed them. Grubs do nothing but eat for a solid half sweep until they're fat enough to go through metamorphosis. You could barely afford to feed yourself. You were living off of instant noodles and microwavable cluckbeast nuggets before you came here.

You'd also have to find a job immediately, and be able to both hold that job and somehow be able to constantly take care of them. You'd have to break physics. That's why grubs need lusii to hunt for them. You can't just buy food for grubs. They need entire hoof beasts to sustain them. 

You frequently think about how Terezi grew up, and how she was able to, as a grub, find her own food. Grubs usually have that instinct. You wonder if you could just kind of, let them go... somewhere... Near some woods.

Keep an eye on them, obviously. Keep tabs, somehow. Make sure they're alive. Grubs don't really need attention or social interaction. They just need heaps of food.

But then they'd reach their nymph state and they'd need an actual lusii and actual friends and someone to teach them what to do.

Maybe you could do it. You're not very patient, though. You'd get too frustrated too easily.

You wouldn't be able to do it. You don't know what to do. You don't know what to do. You feel sick, you can't sleep, you're always uncomfortable, you're ugly, you're gross, you're incompetent, you've gotten yourself into a mess that has no way out and have dragged four grubs along with you and you don't have any idea what to do.

It occurs to you that they're talking to you and that you've been responding with half-hearted "Okay"s and "Uh-huh"s. 

"Also, I'm going to have to give you something before hand that completely empties out your intestines so that you don't shit yourself."

"What?"

"The muscles that are responsible for pushing the eggs from your body are right next to the anal muscles, so there is a strong likelihood that you would shit yourself otherwise," Jade clarifies.

"Wait, what've we been talking about? I haven't been listening," you say. 

Both of them sigh. 

"Karkat, this is very important and you need to pay attention. We've been explaining what needs to happen when you actually lay the eggs," Kanaya says. "This is something you need to be properly prepared for."

It's also something you have no desire at all to be hearing about. You don't want to think about that. You'd like to avoid thinking about it for as long as you possibly can. 

"In short, you're going to need to be completely calm during it," Jade says. "I know that that's not exactly your strong suit, but you need to figure out how to calm yourself down."

"You know, this whole 'you need to be in a constant state of calmness' would be a lot easier to achieve if I wasn't being told that being calm was so imperative to me being alive. And also if I wasn't, you know, pregnant, but...." You fold your arms and lean back into the couch. 

Jade adjusts her glasses and Kanaya tries her best to look sympathetic. 

"You also seem fully intent on being miserable all the time so that may be a part of it," Jade says. 

"Fucking excuse me?"

"Don't pretend like you don't know what I said. You are fully capable of calming down and relaxing. You need to let go of being miserable for a few minutes to do it, though," she says.

"Are you insinuating that I'm being upset about this inherently shitty situation on purpose?" you ask, your eyes wide. 

"No, I'm telling you that you are capable of not being upset and that you don't need someone feeling bad for you constantly in order to achieve that," she says. 

Kanaya is looking at Jade with quite astonished eyes. That flame you'd felt earlier claws its way back up your neck and latches onto your skull. You stand up. This would be more effective if it wasn't such a struggle to get yourself up and if you weren't more than a head shorter than her.

"Maybe I should go find something to shove into your abdomen for a couple days, rearrange all of your organs so that they're all in your rib cage, and then watch you try to figure out how to be 'completely calm about it'," you say. "Won't that be fun, Harley? Won't that be a relaxing experience?" 

That heat engulfs your brain and burns your temples. Your jaw can't get tight enough. 

"Alright. Fine. Fine," she says, her eyes clearly more livid than she'd like to lead on. "I get that this is a really shitty situation for you to be in, but this whole thing that you're doing right now isn't exactly new. And you're what, 18 or 19 now? This routine was annoying when we were 13 and let me tell you, it hasn't gotten any less annoying." 

"Oh, fuck, routine? Fucking- Are you hearing this Kanaya?"

"Yes, I'm hearing it just fine and both of you need to stop immediately." 

"Yes, routine. I don't come over here every couple of weeks at fucking midnight to be told that my attempts to help are bullshit because you're too busy being miserable to actually do what you need to do," Jade says. "And Kanaya's doing so much for you and you keep snapping at her! I'm not denying that this isn't a crummy situation for you to be in. All I'm asking is that you be nice back to the people who are being nice to you and attempt to behave like you've aged beyond 13." 

"Both of you, that's enough-"

"What, do you think I'm upset about this because it's a good time? That I just get myself as disturbed and anxious as I can possibly manage in order to get myself so goddamned euphoric that I could basically get myself off, just from being upset?" you spit out from between sharp teeth and a lashing black tongue. "Ohh, god, being panicky. Mmph, yes. Let me take a fucking break here so I can go fondle myself."

Your legs are shaking.

"Karkat, please-"

"Yes, make more masturbation metaphors. That's what I'm asking you to do. I haven't heard enough of those from you in my life. I needed more," she says harshly. 

"Both of you stop this immediately! This is getting us absolutely nowhere and neither of you is behaving any better than the other in this current situation!" Kanaya interjects. "I'm ending this now before it escalates any further."

Jade goes entirely silent , but you can see that there is still more she'd like to say.

"And, Karkat, I would appreciate it if you would be less snappy about talking about these things. It would help everyone including yourself," she says.

You exhale through your nose. 

"Alright. We're done here. This session of 'Jade and Kanaya play Midwife' is hereby adjured. I'm done and I'm going upstairs to stare at the wall some more," you say. "Since I'm apparently too fucking helpless and pregnant to do anything else." 

You turn and walk out into the hall and do not turn back around no matter how many times you hear Kanaya attempt to call you back. You keep walking to the stairs, and speed up a bit when you realize Kanaya is walking after you. 

You aren't turning around. You aren't having this discussion. 

You somehow manage to move quickly on the stairs for once, though you are not ever going to be sure how you achieved this. You think Kanaya stops trying to get you to stop after you're halfway up.

And then when you're nearly to the third level, you run into Dave. 

"What the hell are you doing here? Go back to bed. You're supposed to be asleep," you snap. 

"I was working on some stuff and heard yelling," he says confusedly.

"Well go back to whatever you were doing. It's over now," you say, pushing past him.

"I take it you're just flipping shit, then," he says. 

"Flipping all of the shit, Strider." You don't look back at him and just continue on to your room. 

You slam the door and only just stop from throwing yourself into your chair. You end up curled up as tightly as you can manage there anyway, though, with a pillow muffling a long and frustrated scream. You don't know how to stop yourself from completely reverting back into a child throwing a tantrum. 

Your claws dig into the pillow and you never fully realize that you're chewing on it. That heat and flame crawls over your skin and burns it, nearly chars it, and your throat is tight with words you could never properly articulate. They just choke you and fight inside your lungs. 

What is she thinking is she fucking serious is this its not its not shes fucking stupid STUPID DON'T FUCKING EVEN she's completely right and you need to fucking stop it she's such an ASSHOLE youarethoughyouareyouare

Your vision is blurred with a red haze and you clutch that pillow tighter as the inside of your chest get's ripped to shreds.

would you fucking stop would you just she should you should she she you he he he should stop should stop he's such an asshole she's such an ass the guy's an asshole it doesn't matter if he's pregnant he's being an ass she didnt need to say it like that she could've just she could've

You bite on the pillow in a way that's actually pretty gentle, tiny tiny bites. Tiny little nervous bites.

stop stop stop stop he won't stop doing this he's just stupidly overemotional and now he's hormonal you're so dumb he's acting so dumb you can't control yourself he's just not in a good place right now

You exhale. 

You pull your mouth off the pillow. 

You've got to stop doing this.

You are upset. You are in a situation that is hard to deal with. However, you'd like to keep your friends from being stressed out by you being stressed out.

Okay.

Okay. You're being a bit dumb.

Okay.

You inhale and exhale again. 

Okay.

Inhale.

That's enough. You don't need to act like that. You don't need to keep rejecting their help. You need their help. They know more than you do.

Okay.

Exhale.

It's fine. They're not threatening you. They're not hurting you. You don't need to lash out. You're fine.

Inhale.

You're fine.

Okay.

Exhale.

Okay. 

You should apologize. 

Inhale.

Okay.

You'll have to get up to do that.

Exhale.

Go downstairs.

Talk to Jade.

Inhale.

Also Kanaya. You must apologize to Kanaya. Possibly cook her something.

Okay.

Exhale.

You can't cook. 

There's a knock on your door. You're not sure how to answer it. You don't really want to. You also don't have to. It swings right open after you sit silently for just a second too long. 

You don't pull your head up to look at who it is. You assume Kanaya first and Jade second.

"Are you still flipping shit or can I talk to you?"

You take the pillow away from your face. Then you throw it on the floor and sit up. Firstly because it's Dave and secondly because he sounds way too serious. It's weird. You don't like it. 

He shuts the door behind him. 

"The shit's been thoroughly flipped. Why?"

He shoves his hands in his pockets and shrugs. You can't see his eyes but you still can tell, from the subtle way his lip is curved, that he's some kind of unsure or confused. 

"I was going to thoroughly ignore all of the weird shit that seems to be going on with you, since it's not really any of my business and I'm not about to go prying into another dude's private shit, but Jade lives like an hour and a half away and it's one in the morning," he says. 

"And?" 

His forehead creases. 

"I don't really think you could possibly make it any more obvious that you're hiding something, to be honest," he says. "And, I probably don't want to know what it is and it's clearly got nothing to do with me, but it seems to be majorly fucking with all of y'all's brains and shoving heads into swirling toilets full of hysterical emotions. And you in particular, being the actual worst liar the universe has ever shat out, are doing a terrible job of pretending it's not a thing, whatever the thing is."

You swallow.

"So whatever it is, I won't give a shit about it, and I won't go making it into some kind of finely churned butter to spread all over our group of friend-people," he continues. "So maybe it'd be easier if you'd just tell me whatever's going on. And then I'll pretend I don't know and we'll all go on being one giant dysfunctional family riddled with anxiety and horrible social skills." 

You think for a second. You realize that you're nauseous and that your legs are beginning to take on a likeness to pudding. Or maybe it's your whole body. You can't tell. You're tired. You want to sleep. You just woke up an hour ago, but you want to sleep. 

You shake it off. 

"Oh, so by telling you, I'm doing myself a charity, yeah? Alright, fine. Pretend your 'coolness' gives you a skin-shield that disables your curiosity sponge and tell me you're doing this for me," you say. "As though me not telling you is what's causing the fucking problem here." 

You want to go to sleep. You want to sleep for hours and hours and days and months for years and years and years. 

"No. Shit, you're just up here kind of having a fucking mental break down or something and I asked Kanaya what was happening and she said I'd have to ask you about it," he says. "And it's kind of concerning and sometimes it helps when you talk about stuff." 

You think back to being stuck on that meteor and how you'd talked so much. He told you about missing his human lussal brother. It had a very unpredicted turn of relations. He'd practically become something like a casual moirail to you for a short time, though you'd never speak about it. 

You'd figured it had happened out of both of you being in states of desperation for figuring out how to deal with the circumstances. 

This keeps happening. 

You want to sleep for at least five more years. You don't know how to do anything else. You feel an ill feeling crawl up your chest to sit in your throat. You don't know what to tell him. You don't think you could explain it to him and have him believe you, and even if he did believe you, what in the hell would he think?

It's not a tumor or a deadly parasite.

Your mind is swaying on some distant sea. 

Breathe. Breathe. 

Inhale. 

Exhale.

You know how to do this.

"I really don't think you want to know," you say. "And it doesn't exactly make the largest amount of sense."

"There are so many things we've done that don't make even half a lick of sense that I am physically incapable of caring less at this point," he says. "I have zero fucks to give, Karkat. Oh- Oh shit, fuck, look at this... Shit.... aw man...."

He made movements like he was searching his pockets for something, looked all over the floor, comically false franticness.

"What?"

"Shit man, just, all the fucks I was gonna give about the thing being weird. Just, aw, man, I just dropped every single one. All over the floor. I will never be able to pick all of those fucks back up. Shit, man. I guess there's none left," he says, hanging his head.

You are able to exhale and your mind stabilizes for a moment of clarity. Except that that clarity is new found amused confusion. 

"Strider, be real here, this is genuinely some weird shit, that I may or may not be about to tell you depending on how I feel," you say.

"Still not a fuck to give about it being weird," he says. He stretches and sits down on the coffee table in front of you, cross legged. Like a tool. An incredibly endearing tool.

"If you tell anyone, I'll murder you and make you into an attractive greeting card collection for the elderly," you say. 

"I wouldn't expect any less," he says, leaning on his hand. 

Should you really tell him? Should you actually do this? Does he have to know?

To be honest, you kind of want to. You really do. You'd like him to just know so you could joke about it, peel back some of the seriousness. You'd like it out in the open and he's completely right, not having to hide anything would make it easier. 

"So do you want to know everything or just why I was arguing with Jade in Kanaya's living room at one in the morning," you ask. 

He shrugs. 

That's all he gives you. 

"Okay, so," you start. You swallow. You fidget. You absolutely do not look him in the eyes. You stare down at your stomach, which is so obvious and so telling and so unavoidable. "So I'm having a... a medical thing, and Jade and Kanaya have been helping for a month or so, since I can't really go to a doctor, and uh, I guess she was kind of getting tired of me being a pain in the ass or whatever. Which is pretty understandable and she's probably right about me needing to chill the fuck out, but I'm not exactly in the fucking mood to be yelled at." 

You feel sort of odd for talking about Jade and you're hoping that it doesn't dissolve into gossiping about her. You're trying to get out of that habit. You're not sure how touchy Dave is about the subject. You're pretty sure that they managed to stay pretty good friends despite dating briefly, which is impressive to say the least. You guess it's because of the shit they've gone through. 

"Yeah, I actually heard most of your argument," he says. "Kinda hard to make out what you were saying, though, and I wasn't really sure what you guys were talking about." 

"What did you hear?" you ask. You wonder if that's really what prompted this talk. You wonder if he heard what you said.

"Some stuff," he says. "Pretty much what you just told me. Some kick ass masturbation metaphors. Stuff like that." 

You should just tell him, get it over with. There's really no point. It's not going to make you feel better. It's not going to make it go away. You're not going to be able to hide the fact that it happened forever, especially if Jade does take two of them.

You should say it. 

Your heart swells up into your throat. You could definitely end up throwing up. It is becoming a genuine possibility that has at this point grown beyond nausea. 

You should just say it. Just say it.

Just spit it out.

Your heartbeat engulfs your head and your mind is more than swaying now. It's caught in a storm, being tossed over wave after wave of unsettled ocean. 

Say it. Say it.

He said he wouldn't care. But god, he will. He will. He'll think it's weird. 

Say it. Say it. Say it.

You might be sick right here. Your face ends up buried in your hands. 

Humans reproduce similarly, though. It might not be as weird to him. He might understand a bit better, actually. 

Say it. Just say it.

Okay. 

Just say it say it say it.

Fucking say it. 

"'mmpregnnt," you mumble into your palms. 

"What?"

You groan and move your mouth away from your hands. "Don't make me say it again," you say. 

"I didn't even hear you the first time," he says. 

You groan louder. You gesture somewhat impatiently it your stomach with one hand, keeping the other covering your face. 

"That doesn't help."

You wince. You have to say it again. Just say it again. You did it once.

"I'm um," you say. "I'm, there are, eggs... I am... um... gross and... yeah..."

He doesn't say anything for a second. 

"Eggs."

"Yes." 

"You... have... eggs..."

You nod. 

"I don't... What?"

Why can't he just take the hint?

"I'm basically equatable to human pregnant and I don't want to talk about it ever," you say quickly.

He just stares at you for a long time.

"I... Are you sure?" he says, at first. Then he quickly changes it to, "If you've somehow absorbed John's prankster gambit-"

"It's not a prank. It's really obviously not a prank. You can see it right here with your own damn gander bulbs and, yes, I am absolutely sure," you say. You make sure to gesture to your stomach again so that he gets it, and then pull up the edge of your shirt just slightly so that he knows without an ounce of doubt that it is not fake. You keep your face in your hand and expose smooth grey skin for just a moment before hastily recovering yourself.

He's quiet again. 

"How..." He says it like he had been trying to make a sentence that had no hope of forming.

"Long long long story for another day," you say quickly. 

"I thought that trolls don't... do that..." he says, dumbfounded. 

"Well apparently I fucking do," you say. "And let me tell you, it is the absolute worst possible scenario I could've ever wound up in even if I  tried my hardest and did my very best at the 'fuck up Karkat's life further' game." 

He's just staring at your stomach now. He keeps looking like he's about to say something, but then he never does. 

"That... is not what I was expecting you to tell me..." he says.

You rub your eyes and try to massage some relaxation into your head. 

"Well, you asked, and I told you," you say.

He's just staring and staring and you wonder if he realizes what he's doing. 

"Who's is it?" he asks next.

"What?" 

"Who's..." He thinks. "Who's troll-baby-egg-kid-thing is it?"

Your eyebrows pull together. You do your best to answer, though you're not sure what he's asking.

"I don't know. Whoever they end up with? Which, yeah, I'm that pathetic that I don't know what I'm going to do with them yet. I'm not in the mood for that conversation either," you say. 

He shakes his head.

"I mean who knocked you up," he says. "Who's the other parent? Who's are they?"

You tilt your head confusedly. 

"I don't see how them contributing to their genetics makes them somehow inherently theirs," you say. "It's not like we say that about each other, like we don't go around like, 'hey that kid has my nose, I bet he's mine.' If we're talking about it like that, then they're mine in the same sense some people say they're the mother grub's. Trolls don't belong to eachother on the basis of genetics. We're not like humans." 

He picks at the rubber of his sneaker. "Alright, whatever, but who actually contributed to the baby making process?" he says a little bit more forcefully. 

"Long, long story for another day," you repeat. You're not super intent on just spilling everything right now. Just telling him about this was enough.

He runs his hands through his hair absently.

"You're... You're seriously pregnant? No bullshit here?" he says. 

"Yes," you say. 

He exhales.

"I feel like I should just be like 'yeah alright', 'cause for all I know about trolls it probably could make sense," he says. "But it's still kind of..."

You roll your eyes.

"Yeah, I know. It took me like a month to get to the point where I kind of believe it and I can feel them moving at all hours of the night," you say. "But can you please try to skip this phase or at least get through it quickly? It's for real. The end." 

"They move?" he asks. You're not sure if he sounds disgusted or not.

"Yeah. It's really annoying," you deadpan. 

He still doesn't really believe you and it's incredibly obvious. He's just staring and thinking and you know that he's just too blind sided to quite get it. He's taking it better than you did, but still.

"For fuck's sake, here," you say after what feels like another five minutes of confused silence.

You grab his hand from his lap and before you are fully aware of what you're doing and press his palm onto your belly, much to his surprise. 

"I-"

You hold him there and endure silence while you hope that for once one of them will move just a bit. It would figure that the one time you need them to that they are entirely still. It figures. 

"Give it a second."

The moment becomes uncomfortably long and then finally there's some little twitch on the right and you quickly guide his hand to it. Then you leave it and hope he can feel it. You let go of him after the moment starts to stretch on too long, and his hand lays there for just a second afterward before he pulls back.

He slouches and curls and uncurls his fingers. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is slightly nsfw. not like, majorly, just ever so slightly.

You wake up feeling like shit the next morning. You don't even want to get up. Your whole body and mind is against it. Dreams cup your mind in misty hands, keeping you in a haze. You don't really mind. You stay submerged in sopor for as long as you can, until your consciousness starts cutting through so much that your ability to hold your breath wanes and your lungs start to burn. 

You begrudgingly pull your head above the surface of the slime and take a first breath of morning air. You lean forward to rest your arms and head on the lip of the recouprecoon, not entirely ready to get out of bed. You hope that the nausea subsides today. You were pretty happy with your streak of not vomiting. You'd like to keep it for as long as you can. 

You let your eyes shut and try to ignore the feeling. You'd hoped that your body would learn how to deal with its own goddamned hormones by now, but apparently it's still quite unhappy. Just goes to show what happens when you start using an organ for a purpose it hasn't served for in thousands of sweeps. Your body was not ready.

And you tell yourself this every day a thousand times, because if you don't, you start wondering if the nausea is because you're housing parasites, and that they'll never actually come out, and that you're actually on a specific diet and go through a specific daily routine and are putting all this effort in only to be accidentally nurturing some parasitic worms. 

You make sure not to think too hard.

Your skin is coated in slippery, translucent, neon green. Your face sticks to your arms and your hair is glued to your forehead, splayed out like slimy black fingers. Little tendrils wrap themselves around your horns. The skinny mane of hair that trails down your neck and spine is smushed onto your skin. Humans don't have that line of hair and you find that odd. Humans also find the fact that trolls have a line of hair down their back to be odd. 

Dave thought it was weird.

The first time you and Dave saw eachother shirtless was probably the most awkward encounter you'd had with him up until last night. He doesn't have a mane. He's got more sparring scars than you do. (Not that you really had any at the time. You didn't exactly have anyone to spar with.) He hasn't got grub scars. His belly button is down too low. It was just really weird. You were sparring together when it happened, too, so there'd been way too many thoughts running through your mind about physique, about his musculature. 

He had properly toned and managed muscles, strong for power but lean for flexibility and movement. He had a good stance and light feet. He'd clearly been built from childhood into someone who would be able to fight like a master by the time he was 15. He'd probably never even been given the chance to gain the fat that was on your body. 

You'd always been heavy, and not only in reference to fat. You were just made of lead and your muscles had been produced entirely from hacking and cutting and digging, preparing meat, tearing clams from the sand, brutishly slicing mannequins into stuffed carnage with clumsy, angry, swings. You did not have muscles trained for the combat style necessary to artfully wield sickles. You had heavy feet and a heavy body and you'd lay every attack on as thickly as you could without thinking about whether or not it would leave you in a position for another one afterward. 

And he kicked your ass over and over again and you got angrier and angrier and struck at him more and more erratically until you were a bundle of huffs and tantrum-style hacks who kept falling to the ground over and over again with heavy thunks. You'd be thrown onto your back and haul yourself to your feet and launch yourself at him with such rapid succession that it had become one ever-flowing motion. You'd go at him and he'd stop you and flip you and you'd smack hard onto the floor and you'd jump back up and you'd swing your sickle and he'd grab your arm and throw you to the ground and you'd push yourself back up and you'd throw yourself at him and he'd throw you right back over and over and over again until finally, finally, he pinned your bruise-stained body to the wall and told you to "just STOP" and you'd found yourself slipping into some weird black-pale crush for just a second or so.

But it was just for a second or so.

And now he's back here and you're immobily heavy and so ridden with hormones that you don't know how to think. God, you're half asleep and weirdly and very unwantedly turned on for no reason other than probably hormones and you have to figure out what to do with Strider and your thoughts are melting into memory-dredged, anxiety-sodden mush.

And your fingers are on your nook apparently.

You sit up. You're still nauseous. You need to get up.

You slick your hair back to get it off your forehead and out of your eyes. You think you wiped some of the slime off of your forehead, but you probably just smeared it a bit more. You push yourself up from the slime, or try to. It takes a couple attempts to stand up, but you manage. Climbing out of the recoupracoon is always an adventure. You eventually are able to plant your feet on the towel on the floor, though, and are able to reach for the other towel on the end table to start cleaning yourself off. 

You wipe enough slime off of your feet to be able to walk across the hall and wrap your body in a bathrobe. You walk over to the dresser and find some underwear and sweatpants and one of the new shirts Kanaya got you and bundle them in your arms. You leave your room and walk to the ablution block. 

As you're walking, the movements you've gone through start to catch up to you and you start feeling just too nauseous. As soon as you get to the ablution block, to end up on your knees next to the load gaper while your stomach decides whether or not to purge its contents. The minutes start to feel endless and you'd really like it if you could just properly throw up already and stop fucking dry heaving. 

Great start to the day. 

Are you actually going to vomit or are you just going to sit here until your body decides to chill the fuck out? Who knows? It's an exciting game of chance. Spin the fucking wheel of vomit to find out if you're going to be able to get up any time soon! No one knows what'll happen! Will you be able to eat later? What random smell will suddenly become some vomit inducing trigger today? So many fucking possibilities.

The door swings open nearly all the way, quite suddenly, and then immediately is pulled back shut with a hurried, "Shit, sorry." 

It takes you a second to even react or realize what just happened. Then you dazedly, between gags, manage to choke out, "Why are you even awake? Why are you not properly diurnal?" 

You're met with silence so you assume he's left. Then he surprises you in a smooth voice.

"I may have accidentally brutally fucked my sleep schedule in the ass. Like really, it was not expecting what I unleashed onto its ass and probably wont be walking again for a few days." 

He keeps going and you stop listening because your stomach appears to have finally made the decision to completely empty itself out, right here, right now. At least afterward you are able to finally be done sitting on the ablution block floor. 

"Also, when you're done puking, I need to piss."

You should be irritated by the way he says that, but the slime on your skin seems to be preventing you from having that emotion, because all that comes out of your mouth is, "No, I'm taking a shower." 

"Right. Gotcha'," he says. You don't hear anything after that.

No argument. That's it. You open the door for a second and sure enough, he's gone. 

You are able to take a shower without any other problems. The water runs over you and rinses the coating of slime off of your skin. You finally feel like you're starting to wake up. Sopor has a tendency to keep you feeling kind of sleepy even if you're not submerged in it and even if you haven't ingested it. Just having it sit on your skin makes you pretty lax. You don't want to know what it'd feel like to actually eat the shit. You'd probably just melt into a puddle on the floor. 

As it wears off, your thoughts take a few dips into some nonsensical and half-waking fantasies. It just sort of floods your brain as you stand there in a relaxed stupor. You end up with a mind full of nothing but a more extreme version of a particularly good scene in the novel you're reading while your fingers just sort of stroke the edge of your nook absently. 

You keep feeling like this, where you are pretty much endlessly on the edge of being aroused while also just not wanting to actually do anything about it. You don't want to have anything actually in your nook, and you don't want anyone to touch you, but you're also grossly horny all the fucking time. So you just sit here and do this until it goes away enough. 

Your fingers press at your folds and you run them up the middle, and then up to press against the forming slit between the plates protecting your bulge. It's swollen and pressing against the opening and you can feel your fingers run over it just slightly, but you're not actually into it enough to have it become fully unsheathed. The tip sticks out and you play with that a bit. 

You lean against the wall and fondle idly as warm water runs over you. Your nook drips a bit, but you can't get yourself much further than that. 

The way the book went about that scene though, the way their bodies were described. Fuck, you're pathetic. You need to just wash yourself and then go... do... What else have you even got to do today? Nothing. You can eat and lay around reading shitty, over the top, erotica and normally that'd sound like a dream come true, but after a month of nothing but that day in and day out, it starts getting boring. 

You pull your hands away from your crotch and rinse them off in the falling water before getting some shampoo to properly wash the sopor out of your hair.

Your hair is getting kind of long. Maybe you can try to cut your hair today. Or something. Your fingers graze your horns as you scrub and you end up rubbing them pretty attentively, letting your thoughts cloud with a thick haze of pleasantness. That actually feels really good, though, like really freaking good. Fuck... Your other hand is on your nook without another thought because its suddenly throbbing so much more intensely. 

You press your fingers hard against yourself, but never actually push them inside. You're dripping down your thighs. Your bulge comes halfway unsheathed and you stroke it with your thumb.

You stand here like this, trying to satisfy yourself at least enough for now, for a while before you remember that you need to finish taking a shower and go eat breakfast. In fact, you are reminded of this only as you start to lose interest and the hunger pains in your stomach start to outweigh your nook's throbbing. You finish washing yourself quickly after that, especially once the water starts to get cold.

You turn off the showerhead and step out of the ablution trap.

You get dressed and stare at how weirdly disproportionate and off balance you look in the mirror for the entire time. You play with your shirt a little before leaving the ablution block, experimenting with how it stretches over your stomach by pulling it from the back until it's skin tight, just to see what it looks like. You're not sure why you do this. It confirms to you, however, the already known fact that you are fucking huge and it's gross. As usual.

Being disgusted by your body has become a part of your daily routine. It's very important to you. 

You head downstairs to get something to eat.

Dave is there, standing in front of the microwave and staring at it intently as it hums. You go to the fridge and stare at the contents with an underwhelmed expression. There's nothing here that you actually want to eat. You turn around and take a few steps to stare unenthusiastically into the cupboard.

The microwave dings and Dave pulls out his meal and goes to sit at the table in what seems to be a sleep-drenched stupor. He sits down and stares at the steaming instant meal. 

"This is full of little caramelized grubs and I didn't realize this until now," he says dully.

"Then you should go to bed and let me eat it if you don't want it," you say without thinking or even really looking at him. 

"No. I woke up at like three thirty today. I'm not going back to bed," he says.

"How did you manage something like that?" You grab a bag of fried grasshoppers from the cupboard and sit down at the table across from him. 

"We already went over this. I fucked up my sleep schedule," he says. "I didn't go to bed after we talked and it shoved me onto a horrible train that goes one way to nocturne ally. Only instead of being full of creepy, evil, wizards and an accidental spying session on Draco Malfoy, I'm stuck in a bullshit sleep cycle." 

"That's really unfortunate for you," you say, shoving a handful of crispy, salty things into your mouth. You aren't sure you've ever actually followed your diet, to be honest. All you really want is salt. Enormous amounts of salt. Also meat. 

He just stares at the food he made and you wonder if he's going to let you have it.

"Why didn't you go to sleep?" you ask. 

"I was working on some music and then I kept working on music and then the sun came up," he says. "You just can't stop the process. It just keeps going." 

He sticks a fork into his meal and carefully puts some into his mouth. He chews once, twice, then his face screws up and he swallows begrudgingly. Disgraceful. 

"This is literally stuff you dare a guy to eat at an elementary school sleepover," he says. 

"I will not hesitate to eat it for you if you don't want it," you say. It may be a frozen dinner, but it's still perfectly edible food.

He leans back in his chair and shoves the little plastic container at you, sending it sliding across the table. You didn't think he'd actually give it to you. You don't question it.

He tips his chair back, balancing on only two legs. 

"Do you think any human pizza places are open now or would I probably only be able to get troll food?" he asks absently.

"I don't know. Possibly," you shrug, shoving a forkful into your mouth. You've eaten this same meal about a thousand times so it's sort of lost its moment of 'holy shit delicious' but it's still one of your favorites. 

He tips the chair back dangerously and then lets it fall with a thunk back onto all four of its legs. He slumps into one of his hands. He sits dangerously quiet for the rest of the time you spend eating what could've been his dinner. When you finish, you get up to throw the remaining plastic dish out. 

He watches you the entire time and of course you notice. You've never really known him properly without those glasses on, so you're always accustomed to slight turns of his head, just minute details that tell you where he's looking. Sometimes he's really focused and you can't tell at all. Other times he gives a little. Most of the time, you can feel his eyes and don't need him to move to tell you he's staring.

You sit back down.

"So, are you like... healthy?" he says. 

You give him a confused look. "The hell do you mean by that?" 

"I mean you look sick, like your eyebags have eyebags. And you threw up like a half hour ago," he says. He sounds genuinely concerned which for some reason makes you start to fidget. 

"I don't fucking know," you say, looking at your knuckles as you pick at their skin. "Probably? I really have no idea."

"Maybe you should just kind of, go find curl up in a ball and take a nap for a few days," he says.

Your eyes roll and a little chirring growl bleeds into your words. "I don't need any more people playing fucking custodian over me, and I'm sick of every conversation being about whether or not im 'doing okay'," you say. "I don't need you to join the 'try not to die' party too." 

Everyone's eyes are just watching and waiting for your body to give up or change its mind or decide to destroy itself or something; you're not always sure what yet, but the area around your feet seems to be made of shattered glass shards that they're all scared you might accidentally walk on. It's not helping you feel better about the whole problem, and it's not reassuring. It's just frightening. 

And you're sick of your life revolving around it. It's not the only thing you are anymore. You have had your entire being dropped into a cup of water and it's dissolved like sugar into nothing at all besides 'unfortunate troll carrying around eggs in his gut'. 

"I'm not trying to be your nanny. It's just all really weird and you didn't give me a lot to go on last night before you threw me out of your room," he says. 

"I don't really have a whole lot else to give you. No one else knows anything else either," you say.

"So, alright.... Feel free to amend this shit, but let me get this straight..." He sits back in his chair. "You disappear for most of the year, don't tell anyone where you are, come back apparently pregnant, no one knows how you are capable of getting pregnant, you have told no one who got you pregnant, the only people who are aware that this is even happening are Kanaya, Rose, and Jade, and now me, and you haven't left Kanaya's hive in more than a month?"

You try to untangle your damp hair with your fingers, but it just pulls painfully at your scalp. Your hair is not fond of any kind of combing, wet or dry.

"Yeah, that is mostly what's going on here," you say, wincing as you try to free your claws from the inky woven tendrils that are your hair. 

The thermal hub suddenly ceases humming and your ears are stuffed full of thick silence. Dave tips his chair again, his socks on the edge of the table. 

You pick and pull at the loose skin of your knuckles, fingertips tinged just slightly purply pink with warmth. You itch dry slate colored skin and recount the three moles on the back of your left hand. Two have them have been there forever. The third one is recent. You don't recall how recent. You used to use them to tell the difference between your right and left hand when you were young.

You still do it subconsciously. 

Dave doesn't talk for a long time. He watches the ceiling and tips the chair on two legs, swaying forward and back to keep his balance.

"Okay, cool," he says, letting the chair snap onto the ground again. 

You swallow. 

"That's it? No, 'what the fresh fuck is this?' No, 'this is some high level bullshit, what the fuck are you giving me, Vantas'? Just, just 'Okay, cool.' Are you fucking for real here?" you blurt out. "Do you know how long it took me to fucking deal with this? I'm not even at the 'Okay, cool' stage. I probably won't ever be. How are you just, down with this? What the fuck?"

"Hey, chill out. There's nothing else you can do about it," he says. "Yeah, it's fucking weird and to be honest, full of a fuck load of questions, but what else am I gonna say to it? Like, it's right there in front of me." He gestures to you, specifically to your abdomen below the surface of the table. "I don't think it's gonna help anybody to just be like, 'nope, gonna pretend it's not real'."

You take a deep breath. 

"Okay," you say. And you think about it for a second, that he's really not too horribly upset about it, or at least putting effort into not being upset about it. You sit back in your chair, relieved, and a little trill bubbles up from your throat. 

It feels like your entire body has slowed to a peaceful stop just for a second and you relish in it. 

"So that's a good noise, right?" 

It takes a second to register what he is referring to, as it is a noise equatable to a sigh that no one would normally question. 

"Yeah," you say. "I feel like I've explained troll noises to you before and even if I haven't, you've been around trolls. You should know."

"Yeah, I know," he says. "I just wanted to make sure." 

"Sure you did."

"Mmhmm."

He runs a hand through his hair.

"Humans still have an incredibly limited vocal system, then?" you smirk. 

"Yeah, weird how evolution hasn't just gone and fixed that right up for us in the past three years. It's taking longer than expected. The site said it'd come in two to four weeks and look at this. Look at it. I still can't chirp like an obese cicada," he says. 

"It's really unfortunate. You should get on that, call them back, make them send that shit in," you say. "Scream at them until you are capable of doing the thing that sounds like-" An unnecessarily pronounced series of clicks comes out of your throat. 

"How will I persist in this world? What will I do if I can't make that noise?" he says, clutching his head in his hands dramatically. 

"Never properly speak alternian," you say. "Also you'll never be able to just chill with your moirail 'cause it'll be weirdly silent the whole time if you aren't talking."

"Trolls are so freaking loud when you jam them all into a room together," he says, as if you didn't know. "You just fucking buzz and all of you are buzzing and it's like a herd of bug-cats and no one knows what's happening but you're all excited." 

The idea of a room full of contently chirring people being foreign to someone is so... well... foreign to you. It's alien. The sound fills up the silence and lets everyone know that even if people aren't talking, they're still comfortable. And moirails lying together, entirely silent but for that one sound, low in their throats, it's the sweetest thing, though so very simple. 

"Humans make just as much noise," you counter. "You just start laughing really loud at absolutely everything, even if it's not funny. Granted, trolls do that too, and that's not really helpful to the case here, but come on, you can't say humans are quiet when you stick them all in a room together." 

"But without the addition of bug purring," he says. "I'm not saying there's something wrong with making cute bug sounds when you're happy, I'm just saying that you all get really loud when you're excited together." 

cute

"Just stating a fact. It's kind of neat actually."

cute

"Like a bunch of cat-cicadas jammin' together."

cute....

"It's neat." 

You keep playing with the dry skin of your knuckles. You trill again. The corner of his mouth twitches up.

"You can probably order pizza from somewhere," you say, remembering that you ate his dinner breakfast thing and that there is a stark lack of human food in the house. 

"What?"

"If you want pizza, there's this one place that I'm pretty sure is open until two or three that you might be able to get pizza from," you explain. 

"Oh, right, pizza," he says. "Yes, I would be so hella down for one am pizza." 

You don't really like pizza much. You're just not a fan of cheese. Dave gets one covered in peperoni and has it delivered to the hive. You're sitting on the couch in the living area when it arrives and he brings it into the room and sets it down on the coffee table and you swear you have never in your life hated the smell of pizza more than you do now.

It smells like sweat and garlic and meat and just fucking sick and you're suddenly on the verge of vomiting again. 

"Fuck that's gross. That's fucking disgusting," you hiss, turning your entire being away from that pizza. 

"Nah, man, no pizza is literally god's greatest creation," Dave says. "The seven days he spent making the earth? Six of those were spent making pizza. True facts from my man Jesus."

"I made the earth and that smells like actual hell and I can't be near this shit," you say, and you stand up to leave the room and bolt to the ablution block just in case you throw up.

Once you're out of range of being able to smell it, though, you start to feel better. Or at least, you don't feel like throwing up as badly. 

You wind up going upstairs after that, to lie down and curl up into a ball under a blanket to sleep for as long as you can, thinking about how much you regret running away and how much you would rather be downstairs talking.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woah sorry for taking so long i wrote this chapter twice because i hated the first version entirely. like completely different plot and everything.
> 
> also if you want cute pictures of karkat being pregnant im posting my doodles for this fic at isolatedgenome.tumblr.com instead of my main blog
> 
> theres not a lot there rn but there will be i promise

Rose came back a few days ago. She and Kanaya are back to having long talks and laughing loudly and holding eachother close on the couch while the television plays. You haven't been coming downstairs as often, but whenever you do, you almost always find them wrapped up in knits and sweaters and each other's arms on the couch. Kanaya's skin will glow as softly as the moon and little pinpricks of light will shine through the all the little holes in her sweater because Rose thinks it's beautiful. Rose's fingers will trail over the curve of her horn, brush the point, and trace down the slope of the bent one that makes her so lovely and asymmetric. 

And you only wish you could figure out how to make Kanaya burst into loud and unexpected laughter like that. You figure you should know how, as her moirail. You sort of do. You remember doing it. You just haven't been able to for a while.

You figure that it's good for her to talk to other people and that her relationship is going well. You're glad that she's happy. She's too stressed lately. She needs to relax and you haven't been able to get her to do so. 

You guess you've become a major source of stress rather than relief. You wish you could be like Rose....

Kanaya's taken the whole "bed rest" concept to heart as well. You're not to get up unless you absolutely have to. It's not good to sit in sopor all day, though. It can make your brain go bad. So it's not really bed rest so much as being confined to a room. You end up wrapped up in innumerable blankets in the oversized chair all day, trying to pretend that this human season involving tiny flakes of ice falling from the sky isn't happening.

Christmas is in two days.

You run a hand over the side of your belly. They're not a tumor or a deadly parasite. They're grubs. You try to remind yourself of this as often as possible. They're grubs. They're grubs, they're eggs holding grubs that will hatch into wrigglers that will pupate into children, that someone will have to take care of. 

They still move a lot, despite what Jade and Kanaya have told you.

You sigh and it comes out as an exhausted groan. You don't have the energy to continue to worry, but it's all just lying there in your chest in a big burning pile.

Your hand stays on your stomach and you stare at the husktop as it sits on your chest. The chair is reclined all the way and your feet are up on the coffee table. You watch the trollian window and wait for Dave to finish typing his response. He should be asleep and you're probably not helping him any by keeping him up like this. You wonder how Rose and Kanaya keep up their relationship at all.

Of course, Kanaya doesn't mind being up during the day. She's usually fairly diurnal, in fact. She's just changed her sleeping patterns lately... in your favor....

You're causing so many problems for so many people. 

TG: so despite the fact that these goddamned beats are coming down with pneumonia and might need to be hospitalized 

TG: im gonna need to take a break from this shit tomorrow

TG: john's doing a thing and im probs gonna go

TG: i dunno if rose is going or not she might be idk

TG: i think she is

TG: id ask if you could go since it might be good for your sanity for you to leave the house for a minute so that you dont start trying to claw your organs out or start watching dane cook videos again

TG: but im guessing that youre still stuck here

TG: being full of children

CG: IF YOU EVER PUT IT LIKE THAT AGAIN, I WILL DISMANTLE YOUR SKELETON AND BUILD A RAFT TO SAIL OFF YOU FUCK YOU ISLAND WHERE I'LL DIG UP A FUCKING LOAD OF TREASURE THAT YOU'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE BECAUSE I USED YOUR BONES TO GET THERE.

CG: IT'LL PROBABLY BE SOMETHING RIDICULOUSLY AWSOME TOO

CG: LIKE

CG: SOME FUCKING ULTRA STELLAR-LEVEL MUSIC PROGRAM THAT YOU COULD NEVER AFFORD IN YOUR WILDEST DREAMS.

CG: ONE THAT'S LIKE, LOST AND ABANDONED, BECAUSE IT WAS TOO POWERFUL AND THEY HAD TO HIDE IT SO THAT IT WOULDN'T RIP APART THE FABRIC OF EXISTENCE WITH ITS ABILITIES TO CREATE THE 'ILLEST OF BEATS'.

CG: OR MAYBE IT'LL BE LIKE A LIFE TIME'S SUPLY OF THOSE CHEESEY CRISPY TRIANGLES THAT YOU LIVE OFF OF.

CG: BUT MAN

CG: YOU'LL BE BONES

CG: CAUSE YOU DESCRIBED ME AS BEING FILLED WITH CHILDREN.

CG: I'M GOING TO VOMIT JUST FROM SAYING THAT, FUCK.

TG: see the thing is my bones are sentient

TG: my bones hold not only my thoughts but my very soul

TG: most humans neurons are actually all in their bone marrow so basically if you build a raft out of my bones ill just be right there with you

TG: right there

TG: underneath you

TG: whispering so quietly into your butt that you wont know if its really me talking or just your guilt

TG: you'll go mad before you reach the island

TG: you'll end up talking to a volley ball with a shitty face drawn on it in your own blood

TG: itll be your only friend and youll think its talking back to you when you talk to it

TG: but itll really just be my bones

TG: whispering into your butt

CG: YOU'RE TALKING AN AWFUL LOT ABOUT TALKING INTO MY ASS AND IT'S MAKING ME UNCOMFORTABLE.

CG: ALSO I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THAT HUMANS CARRY THEIR SENTIENCE IN THEIR BONE MEAT.

TG: its true though man you can't keep sentience anywhere else

TG: shit's gotta have nourishment

TG: bone marrow helps it grow up big and strong

TG: gives it the energy to wreck motherfuckers with its intelligence

CG: YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF BIOLOGY SEEMS LIKE IT MIGHT BE SLIGHTLY SKEWED.

CG: POSSIBLY

CG: IM NOT EXPERT HERE, JUST THINKING THAT THAT'S PROBABLY A LARGE HEAP OF FRESHLY EXCRETED HUMAN HORSE SHIT.

TG: no dude its legit

TG: have some faith man

CG: AT SOME POINT YOU'RE GOING TO NEED TO EXPLAIN TO ME SOMETHING ABOUT HUMAN BIOLOGY OR CUSTOMS OR SOME SHIT AND I'M JUST GOING TO BRUSH IT OFF AS BULLSHIT HUMAN SARCASM, YOU REALIZE THAT, RIGHT?

TG: i don't make shit up about humans, karkat

TG: everything i say is 10000% truth all the way always forever

TG: always

CG: SHOULDN'T YOU GO TO BED?

TG: maybe im already asleep

CG: GO TO BED. 

You feel the tiniest vibration in the lowest part of your throat and you realize its been there for a while. 

\---

At around three, you can't sleep. The sopor doesn't always help if you can't let it. You've been feeling odd lately. You keep waking up every hour. It's not from discomfort, not from bad dreams. You just keep waking up.

You couldn't ever get to sleep either. There was just a thick layer of insistent light draped over your subconscious that you just couldn't get through if you tried, and you ended up more trying to trick yourself into thinking that you were asleep than actually sleeping. Your chest was just too full of knives and claws and gnashing teeth to let you genuinely get any real sleep. Now you feel weird, like you were asleep, but not really, and now you're awake, but also not really. You'd be dumb from sopor but still not quite actually asleep.

You slathered your hair with sopor so as not to let yourself wake up too much once you decided to just abandon the recouprecoon and go for a walk. You may have put too much, though, because you're feeling quite drowsy. But of course, no matter how light your head feels, you still can't convince your brain to just go the fuck to sleep.

You pace the hallways that you've seen too many times and recall the familiarity of the situation with a sharp sense of dread. You don't want to be trapped like this anymore. You hate being trapped in one place. You're helpless and useless and stuck and you can't sleep. 

You end up at Dave's door. You knock and lean against the wall. 

You manage to fix your shirt so that it's actually covering you just before he opens the door. You probably put too much sopor in your hair. It feels kind of nice, though.... Shit. You should go back downstairs to your room, shit...

"Hey," you say. "Can I just, hang out, or something, I don't really know..." 

"Yeah, uh, sure?" he says as he steps aside to let you into the room. 

You're met with stacks of boxes and an open suitcase full of clothes that may or may not be clean. He never bothered to unpack, apparently. His bed is a mess, the blanket barely on and more of his clothes strewn over it. An electric keyboard and his laptop and a tangle of wires and papers sit on it as well. The entire room looks like it's been half destroyed. 

"I'd ask if you should be asleep but you're covered in slime so I'm going to assume that the answer to that question is probably a snarky yes and a few thousand reasons why I shouldn't hound you about it," he says

"I'd be asleep if my fucking thinkpan felt like doing that but apparently it's too stupid to do the thing where it stops," you say, the words sloshing off your tongue. 

You sit down on the edge of the bed and just stop yourself from lying down and getting sopor all over the covers. 

"Weren't you going to John's today?" you ask.

"Yeah," he says, sitting but down on the bed and going back to his computer. "We're going around six."

"Who else is going?" you ask, playing with the hem of your pants.

Dave shrugs. "A couple other people," he says. "My teenage bro is going to actually show up, I think. Also, while you're sitting here, you should listen to this, 'cause it's pretty much done and it's really rad and you should listen to things of that nature."

He clicks a few things and starts playing the song before you can say anything. You almost lie down on the bed again. You want to lie down.

The song is cool and calm but not boring. He usually makes things with bigger statements, heavy beats, meant for dancing and high heart rates and getting lost in adrenaline. There's usually a level of overthetopness to it. This is smooth, though. It's still got some intensity to it, but it's also fairly soothing. It got a little less so as it went on, still carrying the same kind of energy most of his songs did, though.

"I've got the lyrics written mostly but I'm gonna wait to record them. I don't feel like getting the recording shit out yet and I feel like they might be a little under done yet. I'm still working on it," he says. "Not ready for consumption by anyone's ears yet." 

Usually you start getting uncomfortably jealous when he shows you these things, because you don't have any particular talents. You've tried to stop caring over the years, though. You really like his music. 

You blink slowly and your eyes close and you listen. It's nearly over. 

"Mmmit's pretty great," you say. 

He makes some kind of snorting noise in his throat. "You're like, high, Kat." 

"No'm'not," you say, opening your eyes. "I didn't eat it. I just, there's a bit too much in my hair..."

He laughs and reaches out to scoop a glob of sopor off of your head. He then realizes that he doesn't know what to do with it and sits there with a handful of green slime. 

"Shit, do you want a towel?" he offers.

You nod slowly. Your body feels like it could possibly be on another plane of existence. You feel him get up off the bed, only feeling the motion without realizing your eyes have closed again. 

The song stops. 

You sit and sway inside your brain and start leaning further and further onto the bed until you're propped up only on your elbows. You have to consciously adjust yourself when you accidentally start going towards a position where your stomach would get in the way. Why couldn't you actually sleep in your own goddamned cacoon? Although, you don't really feel like you could genuinely fall asleep right now. You groan vaguely. 

A towel lands on your head suddenly. It doesn't startle you until almost a second after.

You pull your eyes open and you come to the realization that you've been buzzing this whole time. You sit yourself up and start wiping some of the excess sopor out of your hair. Then another towel is thrown at your face.

"Thanks."

"No problem."

He practically jumps back onto the bed and goes back to his laptop. You clean about half of the slime out of your hair. You are then left with a much less irresponsible amount on your scalp and a towel full of green ooze.

Your head starts to clear up a bit, leaving you feeling more drowsy than completely dysfunctional. 

You use the second towel to wrap up your hair so that you can lie down on your side without getting sopor everywhere. You don't find sitting up to be comfortable at the moment.

"Why does my back hurt? I didn't even do anything all day. This is such shit," you say. 

"Because the gods of back pain were staring down on you today and decided that they hadn't had enough of you yet," Dave says. "They were like, man, maybe this guy's had enough. Wait, nah, nah, no way man, what if we just, what if we just gave him some more back pain? Just, just one more time. 

This is also the exact conversation that they have every time they start to wonder if they should let up. Then they're like, no, just this one more time. And then it's a thousand more one more times later and you're lying on my bed at three in the afternoon wondering why your back hurts when you didn't even get up to do anything to it today."

"Yes. Yes, that's exactly why. There is no other possible reason," you say, staring at his fingers as he types.

He pats you on the shoulder and you pretend it doesn't make your stomach flip. "The back pain gods have chosen you, my son," he says. "We must make a sacrifice in order to save you."

"I say we sacrifice Nicholas Cage. It just seems right," you say. "It'll be hard, but I believe it will be worth it." 

"I'm gonna tell John that and he's gonna cry," he says.

"It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make," you say. 

He starts typing. "I'm telling him right now," he says.

Your heart jumps.

"What? No, don't tell him I'm here," you say.

He pauses in his typing. "I kinda already did," he says. "Don't worry, I didn't tell him about you being full of babies."

"What did I tell you about saying it like that?" you snap.

"You'll make a raft out of my bones and find a bunch of doritos and then I'll whisper into your butt until you go crazy," he replies cooly. 

"Exactly, now never say it again," you say. Your hand trails over your stomach unconsciously. 

He just snickers and keeps typing. 

"Why does it matter if John knows you're here?" he asks. "He... He's not, you know, the other person, is he?"

You practically spit.

"No, that's not even possible. I don't think human genetic coding and troll genetic coding are even made of the same molecules," you say. "And besides that, no. Just no."

"Didn't you like him at some point? Or, dislike him?" he says. 

"I was like six!" you say.

"Alright, alright, just wondering," he says. "John says that you're an asshole by the way."

"Tell him he's a leaky piss wagon and a poor excuse for a sentient being," you say.

"Okay." He types. There is a short pause. "He says he loves you too."

"Tell him I said that I hope he goes on a lovely vacation to the sea and goes to the beach and has a beautiful day out until he accidentally steps on a gel creature," you say. "And that it turns out that that gel creature is radioactive, and then he get's super powers from the shitty thing, but that they're really dumb awful powers, like being able to float in water for long periods of time, and that he doesn't inherit anything useful like being able to sting people or being gelatinous or immortal. All he can do is float in water like a sad lump of buoyant dirt potatoes." 

He stares at the screen with a smirk on his face, with his hands hovering over the keys. 

"Do you want that word for word?" He says.

"I'd expect absolutely no less," you say.

"Okay." 

He types for a while, fingers clacking over keys. 

"Can you repeat the last part?" he asks.

"He can only float in water like a sad lump of buoyant dirt potatoes," you repeat.

"Thanks."

He finishes typing and sends it. 

You feel something move and your hand twitches to your stomach for a second. They do this whenever you lie down. 

"You alright?" he asks. 

You blink at him.

"What? Yeah," you say. You're a bit embarrassed and stiffen slightly. "They just, start being annoying every time I lie down like this." 

"Oh," he says. He runs his hand over his hair. "Could.... I feel it....?"

You're caught off guard by that and your eyes widen and you feel your face get warmer.

"Uh, sure? If you need to? I guess?" you say. "I don't usually let anyone do that besides Kanaya, but, I guess?"

He reaches over hesitantly and just brushes the side of your stomach with his fingers. Then he pulls back. 

"If you don't want me to..."

"No, it's fine," you say. "Here." 

You press his palm in the correct spot. His hand is warm and roughly calloused and you hope he can feel the same movements you can. You let go of his hand after a second and he keeps it where it is for a while. You both sit very still. Your breath is even and his hand is so warm. It's such a change from Kanaya' who is so cold. 

It's different from everyone, in fact. Almost everyone is so incredibly cold compared to you. They usually send shivers through your muscles. You're not used to having someone touch you and have your first thought be that they feel warm. Kanaya has never been like that, Terezi has never been like that, Gamzee was certainly never like that, Sollux was close, but still a bit cool. He was never like that....

It's like Dave has a fever, but it's pleasant. 

He drags his hand over the curve of your belly, pulling your shirt with it. You find your heart being soothed. You also find yourself very suddenly and very quickly becoming attached to the idea of him touching you and you cannot have that at all.

But

Just for now. It's fine. Just for now.

You let yourself relax. His hand rests in a new spot for a little while longer and then he stops and pulls away from you to go back to looking at the computer.

"So that's neat," he says.

"Yup."

You fix your shirt so that it's fully covering you again. It's still rather tight, though. It's not one of your better shirts. It was just the first one you grabbed. 

"So, like, when are you due?" he asks. 

Oh, God, you don't want to think about that. You take a really deep breath to try to appease your suddenly nervous heart.

"Like, pretty much anytime between now and the next three weeks," you say.

You smooth your shirt and play with the hem. Your breathing goes from perfectly relaxed to incredibly nervous in only a moment. 

"Oh," he says. "Shit, guess I'm not gonna try to convince you or Kanaya to go to this party then." 

You roll your eyes. "It wouldn't just randomly happen at the party. Like, I technically could around now, but probably not for a couple weeks."

He shrugs. "You probably should still stay here," he says. "Don't worry, there's gonna be that other party here that's actually on Christmas. This is just me and John and Jade and Rose and possibly Dirk if he comes."

"Wait, there is? How come I wasn't told about this?" you say.

"You weren't? I thought Kanaya told you. She told me," he says. 

"No, she didn't tell me!" you say, your voice getting a bit higher. 

"Oh," he says. "Woops. Well, I'm sure she was going to. Either way, there's gonna be a party here and I think it's mostly other trolls. Like, I know Terezi is coming. I don't know who else is." 

"Fuck," you groan. "Kanaya's gonna make me find normal pants. She'll make me wear a sweater or something. She keeps trying to get me to wear shit that's not sweatpants and a t-shirt anyway. Like, fuck, man I'm not doing anything but laying around the hive. I'm not putting pants on. Fuck that. No." 

"Nobody's got time for pants," he says. 

"Damn fucking straight nobody's got time for pants," you agree. 

You roll onto your back and stare up at the ceiling. You have to fix your shirt again once you do. You can't wait for your body to be back to its normal shape again. Or, close to it, anyway.

"There's also the possibility that I'm gonna have to explain this to people," you say, smoothing your shirt over your belly. 

"Don't even say anything about it," he says. "Just pretend like it's not there." 

You groan. "I tried to do that with you and it didn't work," you say.

"That's 'cause you didn't pretend it wasn't a thing. You blatantly lied about it and screamed about it in the living room at midnight," he says. He's typing again. "Also John says that he doesn't care about your sick fantasies." 

"Tell him to ram a plastic hoofbest up is waste chute," you say. 

"I'm not mediating between you two," he says.

Your mouth curls up in disgust. "That's not what I want. I don't want you in THAT quadrant," you say. You didn't consider, until that came out of your mouth, that you wanted him in any quadrant. 

"Let me just talk to him myself," you say before he can reply to you or think too hard about that way you stated that. You sit up, slowly, and scoot over to sit next to him and take the computer from him. 

EB: tell karkat that i dont care about his sick fantasies 

TG: JOHN, YOU STALE SLICE OF WHOLEGRAIN SHITLOAF.

EB: good afternoon to you too?

TG: I WOULD JUST LIKE TO INFORM YOU THAT I CAN SMELL YOUR STENCH FROM HERE, AS IT HAS BEEN AN EXTREMELY LONG TIME SINCE I'VE BEEN ABLE TO SAY THIS TO YOU AND I WAS STARTING TO GET BACKED UP. IT'S BEEN VERY FRUSTRATING. 

EB: you sacrifice nic cage to the gods and then just come in here insulting me and talking about your fantasies about me getting shitty superpowers?

EB: thats just low bro thats really low

EB: im not sure how i expected better, though

EB: also despite the fact that you're an awful buttmunch, I heard you've been sick and that that was why you stopped talking to people or something horrible like that, so got you a thing. but you're apparently not coming to the party tonight so i'll have to mail it to you.

EB: or i'll send it back with dave since you two are living in the same house now? or something? wow what the fuck is even happening anymore.

"Shit why'd he get me a gift, no, fuck, I didn't get him anything god dammit...." you hiss. "Shit..." 

Dave just shrugs. 

TG: I CAN THOROUGHLY AND HONESTLY SAY THAT I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO GRASP OF ANYTHING THAT IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW. I CAN DEFINITELY TELL YOU THAT "WHATEVER IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW" IS EXTREMELY SLIPPERY AND I HAVE BEEN ENTIRELY UNABLE TO HOLD ONTO IT.

TG: NO ONE KNOWS WHAT'S HAPPENING.

TG: NO ONE EVER KNOWS WHAT'S HAPPENING.

TG: I DON'T BELIEVE THAT IN ALL THE TIME I HAVE KNOWN YOU ANY OF US HAVE ACTUALLY HAD ANY SEMBLANCE OF KNOWLEDGE OF "WHATEVER IS HAPPENING RIGHT NOW."

"Do I have to get him something now?"

"I don't know."

EB: well thats pretty true

EB: how have you been lately? it feels like i havent been yelled at by you in forever

TG: REALLY SHITTY. TREMENDOUSLY SHITTY. IF SHITTY WAS A CIRCUS I'D BE THE FUCKING RINGLEADER AND TAKE PART IN EVERY GODDAMNED ACT.

TG: HOW HAVE YOU BEEN?

EB: eh i've been okay i guess

TG: COOL, I'M GIVING YOU BACK TO DAVE MY BLADDER IS GOING TO EXPLODE ALL OF A SUDDEN.

EB: okay?

"I have to piss, hold this nerd for me..." you say, handing the computer back to him. 

"Have a good time," he says as you get off the bad and make your way to the door.

"Oh, don't worry, I'm gonna have the time of my life," you say as you leave the room.

\---

Upon returning, you are met with none other than a very loud laugh and an enthusiastic, "Kat, this video is literally everything that matters in the world."

Which then leads to you sitting next to him watching stupid videos on the internet that John sends him for who knows how long. He keeps sending them, and then Dave sends him the ones he and you find and the circle of stupidity goes on and on and on. You are laughing much more than you have in a while, also probably more than any of the videos warrant. You're quite tired.

You end up laying on your side again, laughing at literally the stupidest shit the internet has to offer. Oh how the good have fallen.

Then you start melting into little half-assed giggles as your eyes stop wanting to stay open. You fall into a cloud of fatigue and just lie there next to his laptop while he keeps up with light laughter. You nearly fall asleep when the door opens. 

"Dave, we're leaving pretty soon," says Rose's voice from the doorway. "Karkat, why are up? It's 5:30 in the morning for you. I'd think you'd be asleep."  
"I don't think he's up. I think he passed out," Dave says. "Poor little fucker couldn't handle the dark depths of the internet." 

"Mmnotasleep," you slur out.

"Go back to bed, dear," Dave says sarcastically, patting you on the shoulder. It makes you smile.

"Shit, well...." She pauses. When she speaks again she sounds much closer. "Put him in his room and then we'll be going." 

"Or we can just let him sleep here, it's no big deal. His hairs all fulla sleep slime. He should be good," Dave says. You feel him get up off the bed. "I don't feel like making him get up or trying to carry him without waking him up and/or dropping him and causing serious problems."

"If you're okay with that, then I guess it shouldn't be a problem. I'll be sure to tell Kanaya where he is so that she doesn't think he's gone off galavanting," Rose says.

When did Kanaya get so over protective? This is ridiculous. You're so excited to not have to be so aggressively cared for anymore. It will be a lovely day. You're going to go to a shitty fast food restaurant and order like fifty chicken nuggets and no one will be able to stop you. It'll be the best day of your life. You will also probably die from ingesting too many chicken nuggets. 

"Goodnight sweet prince."

He freaking kisses you gently on the forehead and you don't know what level of irony you're capable of dealing with anymore.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the long lack of updates. school started again and i ended up busy.
> 
> ahh, I also had to completely work out a headcanon for this chapter, that is probably not really all that scientifically accurate. So, uh, pseudo science is fun. 
> 
> I also went through a bit of time where I was rather unsure if I wanted to continue this story, because it's gotten so angsty and I'm not sure im down with where it's going. But after writing this chapter, I feel a bit more into it. I'm going to try to make it less overly emotional while still keeping the character development consistent. 
> 
> although tbh an angsty fic of this nature is always what ive dreamt of finding
> 
> so
> 
> anyway heres wonderwall

Kanaya runs a brush through your hair and at first, her attempts do little other than get caught in snags that wrench your head back. "Sorry, sorry," she says, each and every time you try not to growl too loudly. "It's quite a mess," she says. "You haven't been brushing it at all, have you." 

She tugs the brush through again and drags your head back with it. "You have so much hair," she says, astonished. You feel her stick her fingers through it, or attempt to. It feels soothing, even with the pulling, to have someone touch you, even if her fingers do get caught in the knots over and over again.

"I have a detangler spray that might help," she says. She visually picks over the collection of bottles and products and makeup and combs and everything else cluttering her dresser. She plucks a bright blue bottle and pulls off the cap. "Go sit down."

She gestures to the mat covered in pillows that is meant for sitting. Her husktop is closed and laying with the variously colored knits and blankets and other soft things.

"Right, yeah." You lower yourself very carefully onto the mat on the floor and when she feels that she's asked too much of you, she tries to assist. "It's fine, I've got it," you say, pushing her away and finally falling into a sitting position. 

"Do you want to do your horns too?" she asks. "I was going to do mine. I've got a lot of different colors." 

You don't usually bother with your appearance at all. You don't find it to be worth it and you don't really care. "Sure? I don't know, I didn't really ask for a makeover session when I came to your block," you say. 

"Well, I've determined that you are getting one," she tells you, sitting down on the mat behind you. She sprays your head all over with a sweet but still chemical smelling mist. Then she takes her brush to your hair again and she still has to tug, but it's not quite as painful. 

It still is a bit, though.

"Augh..."

"Sorry, there's one really big knot in the back. Also, it's full of sopor residue, which is not making it any more cooperative. Would you object to me washing it for you afterward?" she says, dragging the brush through the tangled mess that is the back of your head. "I don't mean to be nitpicky or rude about your hair. It might make you feel good." 

You grunt as she pulls again, though her brush is met with nowhere near as much resistance. "If you want to," you say. You actually really like when she brushes and cleans your hair. There is nothing more soothing in the world. You're well aware that you don't know how to take care of it properly and that you haven't been washing it very well. You'd be glad for her to do it for you. 

Each stroke of the brush gets easier and easier and soon it becomes soft and calming. You sit in near complete silence with her, her brush running through your hair and warmth settling neatly in your chest. The silence is backed only by soft purrs whirring in each of your throats. She combs softly and you both breathe evenly, together. 

"Have you been up to anything interesting lately?" she asks, voice vibrating slightly. 

"Not really," you say. "I kind of just sit in a chair all day." 

"I can see where that might be uninteresting," she says. The brush goes over your horns, which is always unavoidable. It always feels strange, though, sending a rough crawling sensation grinding down your scalp. "I'm sorry that you're rather stuck lately." 

You dig your nail into a small hole in the hem of your shirt. You keep making holes. You don't even realize you're doing it. 

"Yeah, it's kind of shitty..." you say. 

You lean forward little by little, in the tiniest increments, until your chin is on your chest. Your breathing is slow and comes at an ease while your throat is full of chirring that you can feel all the way up on your tongue.

"Just be patient," she says. "It'll all be over soon." 

Your chest is beat by sudden, although distant, waves. 

"That's kind of what I'm afraid of," you say. 

She takes a deep breath and you feel her let it out on your neck. "It will be okay," she says. "This may sound a bit like a bad line from a movie, but your body will know what to do." 

The brushing feels nice as your hair becomes less and less tangled. It becomes a slow and calm rhythm to breathe to. Still, you fidget with the hole in the hem of your shirt. 

"That makes less sense than if I were to just suddenly get up and start shoving random shit up my ass and when you asked why with a horrified expression, I'd just turn and inform you that it was for the human president," you say. 

There is a slight pause in the brushing.

"That would indeed make very little sense..." she says. "But really, if your body has figured out how to produce eggs, it should also know how to remove them. This isn't quite as unnatural as it seems."

You sort of prod, or poke or rub with the tips of your fingers, at your belly. "Really, though, this is completely terrifying. Have I mentioned that to you yet? Because it's completely terrifying." 

She stops brushing for a second to comb her fingers through your hair again. She sighs again and moves a little closer to you. Her fingers run easily through your hair, softly massaging your scalp. She runs them through over and over and over again, either combing out or messing up your hair more, you're not sure which. It get's a bit more forced feeling after a while, like she's doing more than just petting your hair.

Her chirring quiets and after a few minutes, in a quiet voice she says, "Turn around so I can see the front." 

It comes out so heavy. 

You do as she says without saying anything and turn to face her. Her face is painfully neutral. She looks at your hair and not your eyes as she brushes your bangs out of your face. 

"You could possibly use it to be cut too," she says.

Her lips press together tightly and she looks at your hair in thought. 

"I think I aught to wash it first and then cut it," she declares.

"I kind of actually wanted to talk to you about a thing when I came here," you say, interrupting her thoughts about the best way to go about fixing the disaster that has made its home on your head. 

"Oh, yes, right. What was it you wanted to talk about?" she says, sitting back a bit and looking back at your eyes.

You look away from her and start playing with the hole in your shirt again. You can fit your thumb through it. 

"Well..." you try to start, unsure how to actually word this. You shrug a bit. "I don't know, it's kind of dumb, really. Actually, never mind. I lied. Forget I said anything. You wanted to cut my hair?" 

"Are you sure? Because you seemed pretty adamant about talking about it just now," she responds knowingly. 

"Yes. I changed my mind. You should just cut my hair," you insist. It seemed so much easier in your head. It seemed like you could just pull it from your lips in the easiest way, let it flow out so simply. 

"Hm... I will cut your hair, but I think that since you brought it up, you should tell me," she says. 

"No, no, really. I've decided that that's not a thing that I feel like doing, just now," you say. 

"It seemed pretty important," she says. God dammit, you opened up the biggest can of dirt noodles here. 

"Really it's not."

"Are you positive?"

"Yes. Stop."

"Alright, but I'm curious now."

"I can tell."

"Do you feel okay? Are you sick?"

"What? No. It's like, personal things."

"Oh. How personal?"

"Like social personal, like interpersonal things!"

"Interpersonal?"

"Like relationships!"

"Like friendships or like quadrants?"

"Like, fuck, no I don't want to talk about it."

"Quadrants then."

"Stop."

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't be pushing into your business like this. I apologize." 

"Augh." 

You press your face into the palms of your hands. Why did you bring it up? Why did you think this was a good idea? Why did you want to talk about it? Oh yeah, because it's a huge problem and you woke up in Dave's bed this morning with him asleep on the couch in the living room because he didn't want to move you and then you almost died.

It's not that big of a gesture, though, is it? Is it? You have no idea. You have absolutely no idea. He's going to actually kill you. 

He's going to kill you with his stupid fucking bullshit ironic charming attitude and stupidly not hideous face and vague attentiveness to your well being. Asshole. 

"So, are you possibly in need of some quadrant advice yourself?" she says. 

You should not need advice. You give advice. It's your one and only jam left. 

"This isn't about um, the other person, is it?" she says more carefully, her voice slightly hushed. 

You swallow what feels like an entire star about to burst in your throat. It's made of memories and worries and a despisal of every decision your mind has ever plucked out of the sky. You can feel your brain trying to drag you back by your ankles, your claws digging into the mud, back to where you've tried so hard to avoid going off to. 

"No. No no no," you say quickly. "I mean, a little bit, in a way, but, not directly."

"Okay," she says, nodding.

Now that she's brought that up, though, your head may as well be full of hurricane water. 

You fuss with your bangs a bit. They really are too long. "This is fucking stupid."

You take a deep breath and rub your eyes. 

"I'm just not even able to actually process the idea of trying to be in a redrom relationship with anyone and yet here I fucking am, like the biggest jerk of the century, having random flushed emotions for someone," you say. "Please just filet me. I can't do anything." 

Kanaya pats your knee. 

"Perhaps you will be able to handle another relationship if you give yourself time, although I'm glad that you recognize that you might not be able to handle it currently," she says. 

Your hands run through your hair and you are surprised at how soft it feels, how easy they go through. It's still course in texture, but it's not composed entirely of tangles anymore. 

"I guess..." you say. "But that doesn't make this any less of a thing that's happening." 

Your entire being is constructed of terribly sharp edges and the soft parts that they stab. 

"Who are these flushed feelings for, if you don't mind me asking," she says. 

"I don't know, I might not even really feel this way," you say. "Like, one of the things that keeps happening along with this is that I randomly keep getting, kind of, just, overly flushed for random people? Not even real people. I've been overly attached to characters in books lately. Or, well, more than usual. You know, right?" 

Her face screws up in thought. "I suppose I get like that sometimes, yes..." she says. 

"I just feel so weird lately," you continue. "I don't even know what it is anymore. I just feel so fucking absurdly weird. I can't even pin point what kind of weird it is; It's just so fucking messed up. It's like I plummeted face-first off a fucking cliff a while ago and my body can't figure out how to just shut up and obey gravity like an adult and fall."

You clutch the hem of your shirt with all of your fingers. 

"That's, also what I wanted to talk to you about," you say. "The fact that I may or may not have an unnecessary and undesired flush crush on this douche only partly factors into the incredibly idiotic and melted disaster that is my current ability to decipher any emotion that I may or may not be feeling."

Your chest feels completely empty and it's making you so heavy. 

Kanaya nods, letting you know she's listening. You try to take a deep breath. You don't know what she'd even be able to do to help you at this point. You're pretty sure that there isn't a single thing anyone can do.

"It's kind of like, I feel like I'm gonna vomit out of some hidden orifice in my forehead that I didn't know I had?" you say, trying to figure out any way to possibly explain how you're feeling. 

Her eyebrows tighten together and she nods more slowly. You can tell that she doesn't know what you mean. You don't even know what you mean. You hold your head in your hand.

"Do you think you are perhaps feeling very anxious?" she asks. 

That was a really simple way to put it, you suppose. It feels like so much more than that, that that one word could not possibly encompass every feeling burning up your stomach. You rub your forehead. 

"Well, no Kanaya, I think I'm probably feeling like the fucking moon is developing a holy celestial being of happiness in my skull that's going to shoot beam of goddamned idiotic mirth at every passing stranger straight out of my sight clots," you say. 

Kanaya responds to this first by staring at you with completely bored eyes. She blows her bangs out of her face and bites down on her thumb nail. 

"Have you looked at the books I gave you yet or have they been lost entirely?" she asks. 

You've been doing everything in your power to avoid those books. 

"I haven't lost them," you say. 

She continues to chew on her nail. "Well, would you be up for a short lesson in biology, then?" she asks. Then her mouth turns up a bit in a rather proud smirk. "I've been researching heredity and have come up with a few bits of extremely interesting information that, to be honest, I may not be entirely authorized to be stumbling upon and seem to have been leaked. The sites are all down now, but I have notes."

She sits up a bit more and properly adjusts her bangs. She curls her hands up in her lap. 

Illegal information about troll genetics sounds like everything you've ever wanted.

"Alright, I'll go for it," you say. "What kind of stuff about heredity?" 

"Mostly things about blood colors that I find incredibly interesting," she says. "Hold on. Let me get my notes."

She gets to her feet and walks over to her computer desk. You want to hide how curious you really are about this. She might have dug up something that might clear out some of the dusty mysteries surrounding your veins that you've ached about since you were very small. You try not to act to impatient. You try not to get too hopeful. 

She comes back with a notebook in hand. "I didn't want the notes saved on my husktop," she explains.

She sits back down in front of you and starts flipping through the pages.

"It turns out," she says. "That blood castes are not entirely controlled by genetics. There are genetics going on, but it seems like it's a bit more complicated than that. I'm not, really super sure. I don't have much of a background in genetics so I may not be properly relaying this information."

"Alright, whatever, go for it. I'm sure you're pretty close if you're not exact," you say.

She folds the notebook back and hands it to you. Her handwriting is incredibly neat. All of the letters are perfectly straight and vertical and evenly spaced.

"So blood colors happen because of proteins that are present in all body fluids, which is information normally presented during the schoolfeeding process," she says. "But I wanted to know, originally, why certain colors are more likely to appear than others and things of that nature. What I came up with was way more information than I'd ever be able to locate on Alternia."

Despite how neat her handwriting is, you're not sure you understand her notes.

"Basically, what I was able to get from it was that those proteins are either controlled by or are in control of all of the secondary characteristics of each blood caste," she continues. "So, to use myself as an example, the proteins that cause my blood color also tell my body to make more skin pigment than average and also produce bioluminescent chemicals."

You set the notebook down between the two of you and play with your knuckles.

"And the part that is really very controversial and is probably why this information is being hidden," she says, "is that we all have the information in our genetics that would allow us to have any of the secondary characteristics of any blood caste. We all have the information to create gils. We all have the information for psiionics. We just aren't producing the proteins that turn those characteristics on and off." 

You're pretty sure that that makes sense. 

"Okay..." you say, nodding. 

"These proteins affect lifespan and aging and a whole bunch of other things, mostly indirectly," she says. "But anyway, the problematic part comes in with odd theories that I found that people could potentially alter their body chemistry enough that they could switch blood castes entirely, or produce 'chimera' castes, like, say, a rustblood that somehow combined themselves with an imperialblood to create a kind of nonexistant caste of seadwellers. I don't know how possible that is, though. That seemed to be the intentions of the person researching this, but that's not really what applies to what I was researching for for you."

Your eyes widen a bit. "You were researching this for me?"

"Yes," she says. "I hope you don't find that too invasive. I was curious about, um, how your blood color came about and also your current, uh, condition." 

You're smiling.

"No no," you say quickly. "No, like, I've wanted to this for literally ever, are you shitting me here? Come on, you're pretty much my best friend. I'm the furthest thing from upset. I'm forty thousand lightsweeps from upset." 

She nods and laughs softly. "Okay," she says. "Well, there is one gene that regulates which of these proteins we are able to produce, and whatever gene we have in that regard is the one that is produced. Certain ones are dominant and recessive and whatnot, and of course mutations occur."

You nod.

"So I would like to hypothesize that, due to some kind of recessive gene that apparently very few trolls carry, or a mutation, you ended up with a gene that produces an entirely different protein," she says. "And that protein appears to result in, firstly, a different function of reproductive organs, and, well, I do not mean this as an insult or negative observation, but a somewhat irregular hormonal production that has resulted in stunted growth." 

You swallow. There's no way to prove that that's all entirely right, but that seems more plausible than anything else you've heard. You'd sort of like a doctor to figure it out someday, but at the same time, you absolutely do not want a doctor anywhere near you ever. You also don't want to become a science experiment of any kind.

That makes sense, though. You're a lot smaller than most trolls, abnormally so. You're 5'1'', which is nearly a foot below average. Your horns are unhealthily small. Your voice is abnormally pitched. You never really thought to tie it to your blood color, though. You just thought it was more ways to make your life worse, rather than a chunk of side effects. 

You are incredibly out of place. You are even more of a mistake than you thought.

You dig at your shirt and make the hole even bigger. 

"But this is also relevant to your earlier concerns that the grubs would either be of your caste or the other person's caste," she says. "Your caste might not show up, and if theirs is a rarer, probably recessive caste as well, then that might not show up either. You may get a caste that seems completely absurd. It really depends on so many things that i wouldn't be able to tell you what to predict, but there is a possibility that you may end up with grubs of an entirely different caste." 

Your eyebrows pull together. "That... I... Okay, I'm not sure that thats how heredity works, but whatever happens happens," you say. "I kind of have a lot of mixed feelings about them looking like him, though. They'd be a whole lot better off, at least." 

She nods. "Do, you have any means of knowing if their caste might be recessive?" she asks tentatively.

You have to think on that a second. Then it clicks quite quickly. "They're probably also recessive," you say. "They're uh, not a really super common caste. God, I really fucked up, Kanaya."

You lean forward and grip your hair again.

"It will be alright," she says, worriedly. "I shouldn't have brought that up. I'm sorry for making you think about it."

"No, it's alright," you say. But jesus, you didn't really think about how much of a problem that that might be until now. You hadn't even considered it. It was such an obvious problem, and you never even saw it.

You hold your face in your hands. Why did you do this? How did you ever do this? How could this possibly have happened? Why, why, why did you make just that one decision, just that one stupid decision, and how could it have possibly lead to so much trouble? How could that one decision have created enough to destruction to extinguish the sun?

"There will be a way to deal with it," she says. You feel her hand on your back. She rubs in circles.

"No. No, if any of these grubs look like me or him, we are completely and totally fucked," you say. "If this had happened with pretty much any other person, it'd be fine, but, oh my god, I didn't even think of this..."

You think back to how, if you hadn't gotten into that conversation, if you hadn't asked to, if you hadn't decided that you needed to, if you hadn't suddenly been struck with the notion that you being a virgin at nine sweeps was somehow a bad thing, then you would not be here. You would not have ended up in a relationship that you would've otherwise not been in.

You could've been fine moirails, you think. Pale feelings still flutter up from your guts from time to time about him. You could've been great moirails. Thatswhereyouendedupmostofthetimeanyway. You just did not function in the flushed quadrant. Neither of you could handle eachother that way for some reason. 

You would not have screwed that up. You would not have confused that relationship. 

You would not have spent two months in a fruitless matespritship. You would not have spent two months being uncomfortably coddled as an apology for him not actually being available ninety percent of the time. You would not have spent two months wondering why you were vomiting everywhere. 

You would not have spent two months with suddenly completely out of wack emotions and a seemingly unending illness that completely stopped you from dealing with the unbalanced relationship in the first place. 

You would not have spent one month trying to figure out how to end the relationship. You would not have spent that month being an asshole. You would not have spent that month arguing about nothing. You would not have gotten in a fight. You would not have needed to completely separate yourself from him for several months just to figure out how to pick yourself back up again.

You would not have continued to be sick, to the point where you just had no idea if you'd ever be better. You would not have spent four months following your breakup, prodding at your slowly swelling stomach and wondering why you were gaining weight when you couldn't keep anything down. You would not have had to convince yourself it was your imagination. You would not have locked yourself away from communication when it began to become grotesque.

You would not have spent all those months hauled up in your hive wrapped in blankets and a thin layer of sweat and burning fear and absolute anguish. 

If you had just not decided that you were pathetic for never experiencing a sexual relationship. 

You are the biggest idiot that has ever existed. 

"Please don't worry," Kanaya says. "Shhhhh..."

Her hand continues to move in slow circles as you curl further into yourself.

"I'm so fucking stupid," you say. Your voice comes out less together than you'd predicted. "I'm a fucking idiot. I'm such a fucking idiot." 

"No, you're not an idiot, dear," she insists. "You're perfectly a smart and intelligent person. You've ended up in an unforeseeable predicament, but that does not make you an idiot." 

You shake your head and dig your fingers down into your scalp and pull on your hair. You can't figure out how to take a deep breath anymore. Her hand circles over your shoulders over and over and over again. She pushes the notebook aside and moves closer to you. 

You feel her rest her head on your back.

"Shhhhh...." 

Her arms encircle you. She is cool and calming and her skin glows as soft as the moon.

You can't believe you're crying again. You're quite sick of doing this. You're quite sick of being upset. You're sick of your emotions being like this. 

Your breath becomes spasms and your face becomes an awful mess of mutant red and mucus. You can't quite grasp what you're even so upset about here.

"They, they're going to fucking kill me," you say. "Someones going to find out about unregistered grubs and they'll kill me. If they were brown bloods or something common like that, no one would give a shit, but fuck me if they're anything that remotely resembles him." 

She does her best to sooth you and you know that if she wasn't here, you'd be doing much much worse.

"God, what the fucking hell did I do?" 

You find yourself actually holding your stomach. 

"They'll kill them and they'll kill me and this will all be a complete waste of energy all because I made one bullshit mistake," you say. "Everything I've ever done ever will be a complete waste because I'm going to die in the stupidest way possible because of the dumbest mistake I could've ever made."

"Okay, okay, shhhhh, breathe for a second. You're not going to die. You are not guaranteed to die. No one here is guaranteed to die," she says. "We don't even know what they'll be, yet. You are jumping to conclusions that are miles ahead of us." 

She holds you tight and runs her hand through your hair. 

"You don't need to worry about that now," she says. "Don't go so far ahead. Just worry about what's happening right now."  
But, god, if you just hadn't made that one decision, if you just hadn't made that one decision....

You sink into her shoulders and breathe out nothing at all but terrible, aching, worry. The past and the present and the prospected future are all just broken mirrors. 

"You've gotten through worse," she says. "We've been through worse. I know that dumping more on top of it is unfavorable, but just take it one day at a time. Everything in this moment, is safe. You are safe. We are both safe."

You've heard her say that before. She said it to you once on the meteor. 

"You are in my hive, and you are alive, and so is everyone that you know," she says. "You are currently completely safe." 

It seems so unstable, though. It seems so inconsistent. It seems like the present is vapor. 

"You are alright," she says. "You are breathing." 

You take a deep, shuddering, inhale and then let it out again. You focus on her coolness, on her solidity, and her pulse and her smell and her embrace. You try to take her word for it. You try to tell yourself to agree. You try to tell yourself that, yes, you are alright, you are breathing, you are in her hive, you are on a stable floor, you are alive, you are breathing, and you are alright.

You are alright. 

"You're okay..." 

You take another breath and another and you try to even them out. You smooth them down and get them neat and calm. You're fine. You're fine. You're okay.

She breathes with you. Your eyes keep crying, but you feel your lungs begin to accept air again.

You breathe. You breathe. You're fine. Her hand moves over your back, in a circle, again and again and again. You breathe in and out and in and out and she breathes with you in tandem. You feel her chest swell and shrink against you.

You're fine. You're fine. You're breathing.

It feels like 200 hours before she speaks again. 

"You still want me to wash your hair?"

It takes you a moment to remember, but then you nod into her shoulder.

"Yeah, do you still want me to paint your horns?" you ask. 

"If you'd like to, then yes," she says cooly. 

"Okay."

\--

She runs her fingers through your soaking hair, trying to get the remainder of the soap out. The water is hot and lovely on your scalp. Your breathing becomes calm enough that all that is leftover from your brief episode is a thin, foggy, ache and an awful lot of exhaustion. You think you'll take a nap after this.

You feel her gently squeeze out your hair and then she tells you that it's alright to sit up. You pull your now stiff neck off the edge of the sink and sit up straight. She starts to towel your hair off lightly. 

"You have so much hair," she remarks.

"I'm aware," you say. 

"Stay there."

She pulls a small pair of scissors and a comb from the medicine cabinet. She comes back and starts combing out your hair. 

"I won't cut it too short," she says. "Just, neaten it up a bit. Make it more manageable." 

You nod. "Yeah, thats good."

She adjusts you and your hair a bit more before she makes the first snip. You go into a bit of a daze as you watch little bits of wet, inky, chunks of hair fall to the ground around your chair. 

She combs it in between intervals of snipping, pulls it up into a clip sometimes. She walks around you, measures carefully, examines her work from all angles. You trust her completely. 

You wonder if you are officially moirails. You have no idea. You suppose it doesn't matter, but you'd like it to be official if you are. But then, you're not sure if you are balancing the relationship currently. This all just feels incredibly, intimately, pale, though. You're purring just a bit and god, you know you love her.

You might not, be though, and you suppose it doesn't matter.

She examines her work a bit more before beginning to towel off your hair again. She pulls a hairdryer from the cabinet below the sink and plugs it into the wall. She turns it on and fills the room and loud, loud whirring. You feel the hot air blow over your head as she combs and brushes rather roughly. 

This next step takes quite a while. Your hair likes to hold onto water.

"You have so much hair," she says again over the roar of the hairdryer.

"Yeah, it likes to be numerous," you say.

She laughs and keeps brushing.

\--

You can't remember when your hair was this soft last. You don't think it ever has been. You can't stop touching it. It's beautiful. And you don't look like a wild animal has taken refuge on your scalp anymore, which is a plus.

You pull a nylon cap down onto Kanaya's head and over her horns and tuck her hair inside of it. She digs through her bag of varnishes, the little bottles clanking inside the plastic.

"This red is my favorite," she says, pulling out a vermillion varnish. "Ah, but wait, wait, I am also very fond of this blue one." 

She hands you both the vermillion and a metallic royal blue. 

"Oh, this one is so nice, as well," she sighs, handing you a soft pink.

"Maybe I should just paint all the colors on in stripes," you say sarcastically. 

"No, that'd be absolutely ghastly," she says. "Oh, I love this one too and I always say I'm going to use it and then I've only ever used it once. It's such a waste." 

She hands you a pearly bluish white.

Your hands are becoming full, so you put them down on the dresser behind you, beginning a line up of what you expect to be half of the bag. 

"I haven't used this one in ages either," she says. She starts to hand you a pale purple before taking it back and shaking it. "Although that might be because it's dried up. I can't recall for certain." 

"I think this blue one is kind of nice," you say. 

"Hmm..." she hums. She digs through the bag some more, pulling out varnish after varnish until three quarters of the bag is lined up neatly on the dresser, ready to be judged. 

"I really do love that vermillion," she says. "I am also extremely into this dark purple, though, and this turquoise color is quite attractive. Hmm, uhg, but what if it's too bright? I always have a hard time finding things that will go with some of these colors. They're excellent colors on their own, yes, but they don't always quite go with a lot of my clothes."

She taps her chin in contemplation, her hair still protected and contained by the varnishing cap. 

"The white would be quite subtle and go with everything, but, I don't know, do you think that would be too boring?" she asks. 

You just shrug from the slump on the floor that you've ended up in against the dresser.

"Hmm... I think.... that for the occasion, that the emerald green would be the most appropriate. The dress I'm wearing tomorrow is nearly the same color, but that of course could be too much of one color. It could be overkill."

You sigh. "Whatever you pick, I'm sure that it will look find," you say.

She scrutinizes the bottles a bit longer. "I think, I think I'm going to go with the green. Yes, the green," she says, picking up the bottle from the lineup. She hands it to you, but as soon as you extend your hand, she snatches it away. "No, wait, white. White will be good. I'm going with the white."

She quickly switches the bottles and hands you the pearly white color. 

"You're sure?"

"Yes."

"No changing?"

"Yes, I am quite sure."

"Alright."

She sits down in her computer chair and you shake up the bottle briefly before twisting the top open. The strong smell of alcohol blossoms sharply into your nostrils. You pull out the brush and set the bottle down on the dresser. 

She stiffens a bit when you apply the first stroke. You've only had your horns painted once, but you know how weird it feels. It's freezing cold and sends it all the way down your spine.

You're careful to keep it neat. Thankfully, this seems to be fairly good quality and doesn't drip too much. 

She paints yours green afterward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i plan to write a different fic after this, probably just a really long oneshot, that isn't... so... soap-opera-y


End file.
